GamingDuke Nukem ForeverSteamgame history
2K briefly put unreleased 2006 Duke Nukem Forever footage on Steam, then pulled it
Fans spotted GIFs and a trailer from builds that never shipped, and the internet spent a long weekend deciding whether the Duke was finally coming back.
Duke Nukem Forever took 14 years to ship, so it’s only fitting that its Steam page took a long weekend to un-ship a trailer.
Fans noticed the listing for the 2011 game had a new trailer plus GIFs and screenshots that weren’t from the 2011 game at all. They came from the unreleased 2006 and 2009 builds, the ones the world last saw through a leak. “THE DNF STEAM PAGE NOW HAS A NEW TRAILER AND GIFS FROM THE 2006 BUILD THIS IS NOT A DRILL,” posted Bobby Taormina (@BTVO17) on November 9. Another fan called it “insane!!!!”
Then, as Time Extension reported, the footage went away “just as quietly and as briskly as they first appeared.” Publisher 2K Games hasn’t said a word about any of it.
For anyone who missed the saga: Duke Nukem Forever held the record for the longest development in video game history until Beyond Good & Evil 2 passed it. It moved through 3D Realms, Triptych Games, Gearbox Software and Piranha before it hit PS3, PC and Xbox 360 in June 2011. Builds from 2000 and, most famously, 2006 were teased along the way. In 2009, with 3D Realms out of money, assets from the work so far crept out. The game that finally shipped bore, in Time Extension’s words, “only a small resemblance to the leaked build,” which fed the theory that the whole thing was rebuilt just to get it out the door.
So a store page showing the old build looks like a clue. Time Extension says fans wondered whether a finished “Duke Nukem Forever ’06-’09” was waiting for an announcement, and stresses that is “purely speculation.” The skeptics have an equally plausible read. Kinsie (@kinsie) guessed it was “a routine store page refresh to use WEBMs like everyone else these days, except someone pulled footage from the wrong asset folder.”
Both explanations fit the facts. One involves a publisher quietly restoring a cult curiosity; the other involves somebody grabbing the wrong folder. Anyone who has ever attached the wrong file to an email knows which one is likelier.
The old build will probably stay in the fan-made corner of the internet. A publisher that deleted the clips within days looks more like it’s cleaning up than preparing a launch. But the screenshots that circulated before the deletion are now out there for good, which is the nearest Duke has come to a comeback in 15 years.
The wrong folder strikes again.