Post by ToddSeriously, twelve years, and its still not done. And probably will
never be done. Was the game actually being made?
It seems so. There's lots of discussion still on the 3drealms
forums. Some of the laid off people are showing some of what
they did as part of their portfolios. I haven't seen it,
but it's supposed to be pretty impressive.
It sounds like 3drealms needed a bit more cash to finish the
game. This is all hearsay from the forums, but it sounds like
Broussard went to the publisher (Take Two), got some kind of
deal for the cash, then subsequently got screwed when the
publisher refused to put up the money when they needed it,
but instead offered to buy the whole mess from 3drealms for
only 6 million bucks. My conjecture is that Broussard,
seeing how he got played by the publisher, decided to not
deal with them anymore and fold the company to get out of
the publishing deal. Take Two has taken them to court to
try to wrest the source code from 3drealms (despite never
having actually paid 3drealms anything; they bought the
publishing rights from the old publisher GT Interactive
when they were still around).
So, it looks like the publisher got greedy and made a play
for the whole deal when it looked like 3drealms were close
to being done but financially vulnerable. If 3drealms
turned down the $6 million, then they probably thought
they could still publish the game without Take Two somehow.
I'm thinking that it'll still get published eventually
either way, if the legal wranglings don't drag out too long.
If the game wasn't close to being done, all these machinations
would be pointless.
Of course, these suppositions could be all wrong.
Cheers,
Rob Komar