Clearing the confusion about Apogee and 3D Realms

I'm seeing numerous comments from people trying to understand the difference between 3D Realms and Apogee, especially since both companies lay claim to the same list of hit games, like Duke, Max and Prey.

Here's the history of both companies:

I officially launched Apogee Software back in 1990, and during that time I contacted some developers working at Softdisc magazine and proposed the idea of them creating a game for Apogee to release as shareware. Shareware basically meant: release online, which at the time hardly anyone was doing back then, pre-world wide web.

I co-funded their first game, Commander Keen, and it was released in Dec 1990 after about 3 months of development. During development, they chose to call themselves, Id Software.

Apogee went on to release dozens of games via shareware and in retail, including Duke Nukem, Raptor, Rise of the Triad and Wolfenstein 3D.

But it was clear that the gaming industry was moving in the direction of 3D games, so I wanted to create a new label to reflect this, and I came up with 3D Realms. I didn't consider this a great name, btw, but back then 800 numbers were super important for people ordering our games directly from us, and so I wanted a name that also worked as an 800 number, and of all the names I wanted to use only 800-3DREALMS was available, so that's the name that was chosen and trademarked by us as our new label.

And from that point we began using 3D Realms for our big 3D releases, like Duke Nukem 3D, Terminal Velocity, Shadow Warrior, Blood (which we sold to Monolith during it's production), Descent (we sold the rights to Interplay during production), Max Payne and Prey.

Scott and co-creator of Duke Nukem, Todd Replogle, packing up to go to Taos NM for a ski trip!

Steven Blackburn was a key employee during the growth of Apogee and is back with us for the new Apogee Entertainment.

But really, all along, the company was still legally Apogee Software, and 3D Realms was a trademarked marketing label that we used. (3D Realms was never a legally formed company.)

3D Realms was purchased by an investor in Denmark in 2014, with the idea of continuing to make games using the 3D Realms label. I continued to work with this new management team who was based in Denmark.

Then, last year two key things changed:

[1] The rights to the Apogee name were returned to myself and my Apogee partner, Terry Nagy. Apogee was then renamed to Apogee Entertainment.

[2] Later in the year, 3D Realms was purchased by the Embracer Group.

So, now I'm no longer with the Denmark group, and the people running and managing the new 3D Realms currently have no connection to the past history of Apogee. You won't find their name in any credits for games from the 90's or 2000's, and they had nothing to do with the making or the release of any of those classic hit games.

This new 3D Realms still claims a connection to the old hits, of course, because those older hits carry a lot of clout. But the reality is that only Apogee can legitimately make the claim that we were involved with all of the hit games from the past. And that's because I was the prime mover of both Apogee and 3D Realms, signed & funded every game, and helped co-design them all. 3D Realms no longer has any link to the past, other than in name only.

BTW, in the news today Apogee has raised $5 million for us to use to help fund more indie games and expand our line-up!

Special thanks to Apogee/3DR alum Joe Siegler for the archival photos!