Now 1UP is in on the action.

Though 3D Realms has now got to take some of the blame for this continuing, because George “The Decider” Broussard himself can’t even be bothered to know for sure what the deal is. Or maybe he really does, and the plan is to let this story ride until even Take-Two starts thinking that they owe 3D Realms $4.25 million when Duke ships. Naw, that’s too clever, or at least too not-cribbed-from-a-Bruce-Campbell-or-other-iconic-gamer-movie.

GameSpot digs deeper:

[Editor’s note: GameSpot originally misreported the figure 3D Realms would be paid upon completion of Duke Nukem Forever. It has since been corrected. We regret the error.]

Keep regretting, fellas, because the amount 3D Realms is getting paid is zero.

It’s the new Highlander Style Fact-Checking Method: when you are notified of an inaccuracy in an article, stop as soon as you find and correct it, as there can be only one.

Joystiq has also fixed the erroneous $4,250 dollar figure, and also still have that money as going to 3D Realms. Can these almost assiduous all-stars pull off another screw-up or will they get it right the next time? And what about sites like Next Generation that haven’t made any corrections yet? Will they just crib from GameSpot again and stay wrong, like Ponyboy stays gold? Did Robert Frost ever write a poem about being wrong that makes fictional greasers a little gay for each other?

Joystiq’s update, with ironic jab at GameSpot’s acumen *UPDATE 6/13* …is now completely fixed (I think, it’s 90% unreadable now)

It’s so hard to say who first reported the news that 3D Realms was only going to get $4,250 for the publishing of Duke Nukem Forever due to a renegotiation of their contract with Take-Two. But that mistake is everywhere now.

The new deal was referenced as being reported in Take-Two’s most recent SEC filing. SEC filings always report figures in thousands of dollars. So Take-Two actually brought the payout down from $6 million to $4.25 million, stupids. It takes very little time to get the SEC filing off of Yahoo, and then CTRL-F to search for “Duke”. Less than a minute. Then you would have had a chance to see you were being dumb.

What you couldn’t have known from reading that, though, is that a) this is two month-old news, or five months if you were good at connecting old dots, and b) the payment isn’t going to 3D Realms, but rather has already gone to DNF’s original publisher, GT Interactive, now part of Atari. If you’ll recall GT also had gotten $6 million when they signed over the publishing rights to Take-Two in the first place, too, aka the smartest deal GT Interactive ever made. The truth is, 3D Realms is going to get nothing from Take-Two for shipping except a a royalty check or two before the game is laughed off of shelves.

You guys did nail the part about the $500,000 bonus if it ships before the end of the year, though! Except it also goes to Atari. Great blogging!

Quite a list of blogtardedness involved here:

(more…)

In the epic saga that is 3D Realms’ development of Duke Nukem Forever, Charlie Wiederhold was a stalwart. In fact, it would be hard to name another 3D Realms employee that lasted as long as him— partly because they stopped listing their employees a few years back when the turnover rate really started picking up.

But after plugging away at DNF for eight out of its ten years, and having long since given up on his famous vow five years ago not to post on any internet forums until the game went gold, Charlie has thrown in the towel and said goodbye to 3D Realms. Taken from a post on his personal website’s forums:

Unsure exactly what I’ll be doing next and right now I’m just enjoying a true vacation with no time pressures and no need to do anything except play around.

Yes! No more time pressures! Wait…huh? Well, I guess I’d have lost a little perspective after eight years, too.