Duke Nukem Reloaded het prosjektet ledet av Frederick "fresch" Schreiber, og planene var å lage en remake av den gamle actionklassikeren Duke Nukem 3D. De skulle bruke Unreal Engine 3-motoren med moderne teksturer og grafikk, men plutselig ble hele prosjektet lagt ned.
Schreiber forteller nå til Penny Arcade om hva som skjedde:
- We closed down the project ourselves based on what Gearbox told us, that there was no chance, little chance, that we would ever see it out, that they would allow it to ever see release. They saw it as a project we could create for our own sake, and that's not what we were interested in, we wanted to share this with the world. So that was kind of how Duke Reloaded ended.
Schreiber besøkte spillselskapet rett før de ga ut Duke Nukem Forever i 2011 (et spill som forøvrig ble dårlig mottatt av spillpressen). Der presenterte han spillet sitt for fire grupper, og de lot til å like det de så. Deretter møtte han lederne i Gearbox.
- That was a weird meeting. They were very impressed by the demo, but what was weird was that they kind of expected it to be something else. I think they expected it to be a mod, sort of the Duke Nukem high resolution pack. I think they kind of forgot to look at the updates we sent.
Tanken var ikke bare å gi originalen litt nyere teksturer, men å lage det i en helt ny motor for å vise hvordan det kunne se ut som et moderne AAA-spill. Lederne var imponerte, men Schreiber forteller at han fikk streng beskjed om å ikke vise frem prosjektet til noen andre.
- The puzzle seemed to come together. If we showed this to people they might not spend money on Duke Forever, which was badly reviewed. They have big investments from Take Two, and of course they spent a ton of money on the Duke franchise, so it's their responsibility to make as much money from Duke Forever as possible. I can definitely see the decision from their side.
- We felt like why were we being punished, and why were the fans being punished, because we had created something that was too good? That was how the whole thing ended.
Gearbox kan altså ha stoppet prosjektet i frykt for at Duke Nukem 3D ville satt Duke Nukem Forever i skyggen. Men det finnes likevel håp for de som gjerne vil se at spillet blir en realitet, forteller Schreiber:
- It's been a couple of years since Duke Forever was out, and maybe the disappointment is slowly fading away and people are getting ready to see something new. Then maybe we can bring it up again.