Duke Nukem Wherever, Stardock Layoffs

via Bigdownloads:

While the official Duke Nukem Forever web site pretty much gave away this fact on Friday with its trademark fine print at the bottom, today Gearbox Software made it official. The developer formed by a number of ex-3D Realms employees announced in a press release and at its PAX Prime 2010 panel on Sunday night that it has now acquired the Duke Nukem franchise and IP from 3D Realms. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Naturally these rights include the revived Duke Nukem Forever first person shooter game which Gearbox is now in charge of completing after over 13 years in development. 3D Realms' co-founders Scott Miller and George Broussard have given their blessings for this deal with Broussard stating, "Gearbox was the only home appropriate for the Duke Nukem brand." The big question: with its most lucrative brand now sold off to Gearbox, what is the future going to be like for 3D Realms as a company?

A: They have no future

Stardock Layoffs

Via Elemental forums, commenting on a story by Shacknews:

It is true.

Elemental's revenue was anticipated to provide the revenue both for our main games team's next project as well as a second team. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen so we've had to start laying people off.

No one is being fired. None of these people did anything wrong. Stardock is a small company and each person here is truly amongst the best and brightest. So you can imagine how much it sucks for all of us to lay off anyone. We haven't had to lay anyone off since our migration from the OS/2 market in 1998. It would be great if we can bring as many of these people back over time if the studio can afford it.

No one involved on the core components of Elemental is affected.

Elemental's rocky launch can be summed up (IMO) as follows: Our QA process was insufficient to handle a brand new platform (Elemental = Kumquat 1.0 versus say Galactic Civilizations II was using Pear which was the same engine, modified, from 1997's Entrepreneur) + my own catastrophic poor judgment in not objectively evaluating the core game play components.

Although I love Stardock as a company, and admire the regard they hold their fans in, The development team Messed up bad with Elemental. The multi player features still are not enabled, screens overlap each other, and the game is just buggy overall. I feel bad for them, but that's what happens when a substandard product gets released.

On a positive note however, check back on this game in a few months. Stardock does not abandon their games.