Legal Niches

Secret Duke Nukem Game in Development?

By gamepolitics

While the video game community knows all too well that the long-awaited Duke Nukem Forever project is stalled (and currently being litigated), GamePolitics has learned that a Duke Nukem game is in development by a "well-known" developer under contract with publisher Take-Two Interactive.

This juicy, new detail is contained in a court document filed on Friday by DNF developer Apogee Software. Responding to a lawsuit filed against it last month by Take-Two, attorneys for Apogee told the U.S. District Court in Manhattan:

As part of the October 2007 Agreement, Take-Two agreed to pay Apogee $2,500,000 as an advance to help fund the development of the DNF game, but only after Take-Two visited Apogee to review the status of the development of the DNF game within Apogee.

 

Repayment of the $2,500,000 advance was to come from royalties generated by sales of the DNF game and/or a new Duke Nukem-based game being developed in parallel by a separate well-known game developer under contract with Take-Two.

 

The October 2007 agreement did not provide for a completion deadline for DNF. However, the development agreement for the new Duke Nukem-based game (not to be confused with the DNF game) being developed by the separate game developer scheduled the new Duke Nukem-based game to be completed by mid-2010.

 

In the event the DNF game was not commercially released before October 22, 2012, then and only then, the $2,500,000 advance became due and payable to Take-Two, but only to the extent this advance had not already been recouped from royalties from sales of the new Duke Nukem-based game.

GamePolitics has requested comment from Take-Two.

UPDATE: Aside from DNF, the only publicly-named but unpublished Duke game is Duke Nukem Trilogy for the DS/PSP,which was shown at E3 2008. Take-Two, however, has not been publicly mentioned as its publisher. A recent report on GameSpot mentions DNT as a joint project between Apogee and Deep Silver. There is no mention of any involvement by Take-Two.

Also, given that DNT is a known quantity, if that is the game referred to in the court filing, why wouldn't Apogee just name it and its developer?

UPDATE 2: The game mentioned by Apogee is Duke Begins and is in the hands of 2K Games, a Take-Two subsidiary. See follow-up GP coverage for more details.

Full post as published by GamePolitics.com on June 22, 2009 (boomark / email).