Duke Nukem Developer 3D Realms Shuts Down (??)

Sue the pants off of those incompetent managers.

GO TAKE TWO!!!!!

OW YEAAH!!

Quote

Ken Silverman

> .. 3DR .. being sued for $12,000,000 by Take2.

I wish them luck. I'm actually rooting for Take2 on this one. The reason is: 3D Realms hasn't paid my royalties since 2003, so I probably ought to be suing them, too. I'd be curious to know if other former employees have been treated this way. On the topic of 3DR shutting down, I would blame the management - George and Scott - for failing to see reality.

-Ken S.

royalties for what?

The work he's done?

Quote from kleinluka

royalties for what?

Do you not know who Ken Silverman is? He created the Build engine, Duke3d's engine (and Blood's engine, and Shadow Warrior's engine). From the recent XBLA port alone he should be owed quite a lot of money.

Uh yes but those games all came out like 10 years ago so if he never received royalties for them then why the hell did he stay at 3DRealms? Seems kind of weird...

Quote from Jetsetlemming

From the recent XBLA port alone he should be owed quite a lot of money.

If by a quite a lot of money you mean $893, then ok.

In all seriousness, I don't think the sales were that stellar to warrant someone to complain about a lack of royalty pay.

Quote from kleinluka

Uh yes but those games all came out like 10 years ago so if he never received royalties for them then why the hell did he stay at 3DRealms? Seems kind of weird...

He left 3DR in the late nineties or so and they stopped sending him royalty checks in 2003.

How 3DR treated Ken Silverman is one of my biggest reasons for hating them, actually. They pretty much treated him like shit and stuck him on a non-compete contract that was in effect for a few YEARS. Completely removed him from the videogame industry permanently, a guy with the talent to be up there with Carmack and Sweeney in creating engines.

That seems really uncharacteristic of 3drealms, in this interview he is really happy about his time there. It states he shares he rights to the build engine. That he left on his own to go study.

http://www.3drealms.com/news/2006/02/th ... acy_8.html

Why someone would ever sign a non-compete clause that lasts a FEW YEARS, fully being aware of the risks it poses on your career is beyond me so I don't feel sorry for him for that either. I would never sign such a thing, it's a stupid thing to do. And honestly, he's not the only one who doesn't receive royalties like they should. I worked on Rainbow Six Vegas for over 2 years, I was the first production artist on the project, I left Ubisoft and never received a royalty check from them. Do you hear me bitching about it in public? NO. Because I left on my own terms and so did he. Most companies don't pay you royalties when you leave, it's not something that's particular to Ken Silverman or 3DRealms. At least he got paid until 2003. That's already more than 90% of us would ever see.

Quote from Gloglebag

That seems really uncharacteristic of 3drealms, in this interview he is really happy about his time there. It states he shares he rights to the build engine. That he left on his own to go study. http://www.3drealms.com/news/2006/02/th ... acy_8.html

Yeah maybe, but this is an interview posted on the 3DRealms site so obviously they wouldn't publish anything that said "LOL THEY SCREWED ME OVER 3D REALMS SUCKS"....

Dude Silverman joined 3DRealms as a teenager as his one and only game development job, and he wasn't seeking it out either. He saw how neat Wolfenstein 3d was as a kid and tried to recreate it on his own with Ken's Labyrinth, sent a floppy of it to ID/Apogee/Epic Megagames, and he ended up getting head-hunted by that circle of Texas developers. He started work on the Build engine when he was only 18. I doubt he could read a single sentence of the contract he was handed, and didn't care because surely these nice cool game development guys wouldn't screw him over!

Where is the evidence they screwed him over! You are just saying he signed a non compete contract.

Quote from Gloglebag

Where is the evidence they screwed him over! You are just saying he signed a non compete contract.

That put him (a guy people referred to at the time as "John Carmack's biggest rival") pretty much permanently out of the game industry. Ever since Duke3d Ken Silverman's been living in his parent's house, made a couple proof of concept engines that went nowhere (besides Voxlap which spawned a 10 minute long "Voxelstein" game, which was admittedly totally fucking awesome), and some image codecs for .png and SLR camera images.

Where is evidence they had him sign a non-compete ccontract?

Hearsay

On the subject of non compete contracts, us low level devs would never have to sign one (besides it can easily be judged as unfair by many courts, even after signing it) but it is fair and you would have to sign one if you're among the top dogs of any company. In these positions, you're given access to extremely sensitive information that can totally destroy the next few years of the company if they were to come out.

Signing one usually means you're heavily compensated for it though. Example of one such contract was for Martin Tremblay, former CEO of Ubisoft Montreal, who was forced not to open his own dev studio right after leaving Ubisoft.