http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/how-and-why-gearbox-shut-down-an-ambitious-beautiful-re-telling-of-duke-nuk

Sorry, but this is really an inacceptable behavior of Gearbox, in (not only) my opinion. I mean, they give rights to create a game but then not to release it... what the heck?

Wow, that's rather dickish of them. And probably represents some sort of tort.

Gearbox doesn't have the right to tell people what they're able to create for their own personal use. So, for them to claim that they were only licensing it for that purpose is questionable to say the least. At most, they'd have the right to dictate the terms of the trademark, and I'm not even sure that they own that.

What's more, it's unlikely to be enforceable anywhere in the US as the interpretation of ambiguous language goes by the interpretation of the 2nd party, rather than the party that wrote the license.

Obviously, it's a moot point seeing as the developer here isn't going to be able to litigate it, but I'm going to have to think long and hard before I buy anything from them in the future.

Gearbox are a sleazeball company, not the least for defrauding SEGA of millions in milestones for Colonial Marines while channeling the money into Borderlands development. Even more bizarre is the coterie of idiot fanboys they carry around on sites like Reddit. Gearbox shoved every form of lame internet meme into Borderlands 2 to please the Reddit crowd, and now they defend them fanatically.

There was no way this would ever get released so near Forever's release date.

A team of fans makes an awesome game that outshines the crap we got in Forever? For -free-? Yeah, that would make them look even worse than Forever on its own ever did.

What a shame - I got the feeling that Frederick Schreiber really got his heart broken, what a shame.

This sucks! I'm willing to bet that it would have 100X better than DNF.

Eh, Gearbox are on my shit list ever since they sacrificed Aliens in order to make a shitty juvenile sandbox shooter with a NPC called Face McShooty.

So near? At the rate they were working on it, it would have been at least a year after DNF's sales cratered.

Gearbpx has fallen. I used to enjoy Memelands, but then I learned that Gearbox used the money that was supposed to go into Colonial Marines went to their pet project instead. Now I can't look at it without feeling guilty, like my purchase just legitimized the defraudment.

I tend to think of Gearbox a bit like the old Silicon Knights (now Precursor), they can make good, competent products when they have a publisher breathing down their neck and maintaining quality control (ie Opposing Force/Blue Shift and Valve), but when they are allowed off the leash they are lazy and incompetent. I'd argue Borderlands 1/2 were only "saved" from being utterly unplayable messes by channeling SEGA's money for Aliens development into Borderlands, and 2K Publisher breathing down their necks.

Duke Nukem Forever couldn't be saved because 3D Realms was a non-entity and after wasting money switching engines for years and years had no choice to outsource it with little to no ability to oversee quality control.

Those screens seem much better then Duke Nukem Forever.
Gearbox is a shady company.

Well, it would sure as hell been better than DNF. But there's little point remaking DN3D when the source-code is public and an almost perfect source-port exist. Except if you're a graphics whore

Update:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/gearbox-states-fan-made-duke-nukem-reloaded-project-still-cleared-for-non-c
“The non-commercial license we granted them remains intact and we hope to see them release Duke Nukem 3D Reloaded whenever they are ready to do so.”

SSssooo, why hasn't Gearbox bought them up, and released this as an official HD remake? I am starting to think that Gearbox are allergic to non-Borderlands money.