Duke Nukem: the franchise at the center of a legal battle

Several years after the last discussion, Gearbox Software is going to sue Apogee Software, the parent company of 3D Realms, accusing the creator of the franchise of Duke Nukem violating the contract we entered into together in 2009. In a third-party complaint, filed Friday in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, Gearbox said Apogee Software violated a contract stipulated way back in 2009 by failing to deliver Duke Nukem's intellectual property in a perfectly free and evident manner, withholding some details of an agreement that affects Gearbox's ability to publish franchise titles.

In 2010, 3D Realms sold the IP of Duke Nukem a Gearbox, ensuring that there would be no copyright infringement in the series. Last September, however, Robert "Bobby" Prince, a composer and sound designer whose music has appeared in several classic games, including Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, sued Gearbox, claiming to own the copyright to some music included in the 2016 game of the series Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour, a remaster of the franchise's most famous title. Duke Nukem 3D World Tour was released in 2016 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One e PC. So we just have to wait for further news on the cause and its final verdict.