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I’d say 12 years is plenty of time to get a game developed in. I’m sorry but this ‘blame the publisher’ BS, as an excuse for 3DRs managerial ineptness honestly doesn’t fly in this case. The people I feel sorry for are the designers and artists who’ve wasted countless man hours on the project to see no reward for their efforts at the end of the day. Here is hoping that the taint of 3DRs failure to deliver doesn’t work against them in their search for future employment.

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Glad to see someone else comprehends the realities of the situation. In the Giantbomb podcast they hint at industry rumours of GB doing the rounds of other developers such as Valve, ID and Epic trying to raise investment and meeting closed doors at every opportunity in the previous weeks before the closure. If none of those companies are interested in putting money into the project for a slice of the profits down the road then it doesn’t exactly sound like DNF was either close to shippable or that impressive a title.

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Thomas, you at the least are not as completely confused about the circumstances, but your analysis of the situation is pretty off base. Kadayi is completely right here. Whether or not Take 2 paid money directly to 3D Realms doesn’t matter. There exists a contract between them committing 3D Realms to eventually deliver a finished game. Obviously there was no time table. 3D Realms was also completely responsible to fund the game themselves. As long as 3D Realms still seemed to be sorta working on the game Take 2 couldn’t do anything but wait.

But then 3D Realms ran out of money, Take 2 declined to inject new money into 3D Realms to fund more development and work on the game stopped completely. That’s really, I believe, what opens the door for legal action. As DNF is no longer being worked on, 3D Realms can no longer pretend it is still on the way to shield them from litigation.

We cannot pretend like this is a temporary set back. 3D Realms can’t offer other investors anything in exchange for capital or credit. Take 2 already holds the all valuable publishing rights. 3D Realms could try and repackage the game under a new name with a new publisher, but that publisher would certainly be aware of the litigation they’d invite. Given the 12 year catastrophe that is DNF up to this point why would anyone else take the risk? George and Scott have nothing left to bargain with.

Frankly, it would be irresponsible of any public company to throw more money at 3D Realms, so not only would Take 2, or any other party, be risking an even greater loss by funding further development, they would open themselves up to lawsuits from shareholders, etc. 3D Realms has been given all the last chances it is ever gonna get. To suggest they are being “set up” is beyond absurd. There is zero evidence of that, but a lot of evidence of 3D Realms’ incompetence and perhaps malfeasance.

The only thing 3D Realms has left of value is the DNF code and assets and the Duke IP. But, frankly, those aren’t valuable to anyone but Take Two since they maintain the publishing rights.

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DNF was never coming imo, from gameplay vids it looked ok, but not worth 12 years of development.

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There is absolutely nothing in the order instructing them to cease production on the game. What the order states is that they deliver a copy of the game code etc as is unaltered, and that they cannot use the created assets to make an alternative product (folding DNF to bypass their publisher obligations and then releasing “Baron Yesterday Last Week” a month later). Principally its blocking 3DR from self sabotaging the existing work done in order to try and bypass the copy request. Why would they do this? well probably because they don’t trust GB not to do something stupid. If there’s been a strain in the relationship between Take 2 and 3DR whom exactly do you think the main culprit is?

I recommend giving the most recent giantbomb podcast a listen as they have quite an interesting discussion on the 3DR situation.

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3DR is trying to get back on their feet, the very least they could do is to back off while they give it a shot, or try to finance them if they want the game.

But i have absolutely no doubt that this is a setup from Take 2, we already know their relationship is pretty strained, and i wouldn’t be surprised if we hear 3DR saying that Take 2 offered them funding but at the last moment pulled out.

But we’ll see about that.

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Why? As you yourself claim, they aren’t ‘funding’ the game (or obliged to) so the only ones who are responsible for 3DR financing is 3DR at the end of the day, and given their pisspoor delivery record I’m not surprised they can’t raise any more investment in these lean times. I doubt there’s a publisher in the world who’d cut them a cheque at present.

“Now it’s pretty obvious that instead of helping Take 2 would rather want to sue them so they could hopefully gain everything, instead of only something.”

I actually suspect take 2 would like a finished product to sell, but so far that doesn’t look like it’s happening, and increasingly unlikely to either. However I don’t blame them for not giving 3DR any further funding. They’ve had 12 years to get this game done. How much more rope can you give them to hang you by?

“But that still doesn’t change the fact that DNF isn’t out of developement, and a week of no developement work hardly qualifies as a game that can never be finished.”

They just laid off their entire staff, do you not see the Iceberg on the horizon?

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I wonder how many debts 3DRealms has. And how his personal funds were handled by the company, could they even be in debt with George himself?

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So i don’t see how you can claim that the current situation means that DNF will never be done by 3D Realms, sure they’ve suffered a setback, but as they’ve not gone bankrupt nor cancelled the game they’ve actually confirmed that they were much still is working on a solution.

Now it’s pretty obvious that instead of helping Take 2 would rather want to sue them so they could hopefully gain everything, instead of only something.

But that still doesn’t change the fact that DNF isn’t out of developement, and a week of no developement work hardly qualifies as a game that can never be finished.

Maybe 3DR should counter-sue Take 2 for interfering with the developement process.

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