Gearbox and Valve are Getting Sued by Former Duke Nukem 3D Composer

Randy Pitchford already has a long and storied history of being abusive, not paying people, and generally being a terrible person, and I’ll never miss an opportunity to report his next jerk move because I think it’s important that people remember that he’s a bad person, even if he is the head of a more-or-less well-liked studio. So imagine my delight(?) when I woke up this morning to the news that ol’ Randy Pitchford, as well as Gearbox and Steam itself, is getting sued.

The sue-er in question is one Bobby Prince, the composer of Doom, Doom 2, Wolfenstein 3D and Duke Nukem 3D. His grievance… is a bit complicated, but here’s what it amounts to: way back when I wrote the music for Duke Nukem 3D in 1996, he struck a deal with the developer Apogee to ensure he remained the copyright holder of the music and that they were only licensing it. To that end, he got a royalty fee of exactly $1 for every unit sold. Fair enough.

However, when Gearbox purchased the Duke Nukem IP from Apogee in 2010, and then went on to re-release Duke Nukem 3D as the 20th Anniversary Tour update in 2016, they failed to ask for Bobby Prince’s permission before using his music, or pay him for it, as per his old agreement.

Apparently, Mr. Prince reached out to both Randy Pitchford and Valve, to get the music removed from the game, or to remove the game from sale, respectively. The latter ignored his demands, while the former insisted that he would be “taken care of”, but never actually followed up on that presumed promise for royalties.

Which seems like a terribly in-character thing for Randy Pitchford to do.

Anyway, both Valve and Gearbox have 21 days to respond to the court summons. And I bet Gearbox’s PR guys are already complaining about how they have to cover their boss’s big butt once again.