Guys, anyone able to give me the exact time stamp of the googlechat in which they talk about DNF? Thanks to holes in a lot of stories here, it's well worth investigating to a fuller extent what the legal situation is and what kind of QA we'd be looking at for a release of this game. Fred Schreiber appears way too confrontational here, and his track record of releasing games pre-QA isn't the greatest, so I'd also really love to have a much clearer picture as to what "80%" actually does mean.
There's no holes in any stories and Fred Schreiber isn't being confrontational. Here's the timestamp:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JephRoi3os&t=41m10s
- Randy claims 2K holds publishing rights and they're reaching a deal for a Duke Nukem Collection that could 'potentially' include old builds
- Fred makes an offer to prepare old builds for free, the editor for free, and do any necessary work as 'fan service'
- Randy claims they would have to pay certification costs, do quality assurance, and even if all work was free it would still cost money - for anyone out of the loop here you don't pay certification or put prototypes through quality assurance. You release them as they are. Freds offer is to do basic fixes so they're stable on modern operating systems and remove any personal information or content that can't be released publicly like source code
- Someone asks about Duke Nukem 3D old builds, in the case of Duke3D Gearbox owns all the rights no complications with a publisher. Randy uses the same excuse - which is a complete lie. As said in different posts Croteam, Volition, id Software, 3D Realms, and others have released builds to fans for free.
- "80%" complete means large sections of the game are playable. It has been revealed that before this call and Fred spoke to Randy Gearbox had very little material outside of the final iteration of the game, Randy even incorrectly states that little existed of those builds before Fred corrects him and Randy admits he hasn't actually seen any of the content...because they don't have it..after this call took place Fred packaged up all the Duke Nukem Forever material and sent it to Randy.
He makes many references to a Duke Nukem collection that pretty clearly shows he has no interest unless he can sell it even with offers to do work for free.
There's no hidden agendas, attempts to get paid here, nothing like that. They released ten Shadow Warrior prototypes for free without money exchanging hands, they released a build of Major Stryker for free recently. They're just fans involved in the company that see the value in this content as we do.