Kotaku has some details on how Duke Nukem Forever survived the sacking of its development team to live on as an ongoing project at Gearbox Software. It turns out that in spite of little hope they would be able to release the game due to legal complications, some of the former 3D Realms staff could not let go of the project, and continued development from home: "One of the co-creators of the well-known Duke Nukem character, Allen Blum, was among the 3D Realms developers fired in May of 2009. He was a veteran. 'He couldn't let it go,' Pitchford said. 'I wouldn't either. He decided to keep it going.' So, post 3D Realms, Duke Nukem Forever development continued in the apartments of some of the laid off staff. It became, essentially, a garage game. 'I got wind of it,' Pitchford said. 'I came around and checked things out'." Apparently it was Pitchford's history with Duke, 3D Realms, and Take Two all lead to Gearbox being able to bet on Duke. Pitchford says: "The short story of it is: Because of my history with Duke, because of my relationship with Scott and George, because of the trust and respect that Gearbox and Take Two were able to build through our work together with Borderlands, and through the capabilities that I have built with my team to be able to ship games on these platforms — because of all of these things, I was in a spot that, if I took a bet and got in there and put myself in the line of fire in the middle of this thing, I knew that I could bring all these pieces together and that I could save Duke." On a related note, there are some DNF gameplay screenshots on Computer and Video Games.