Duke Nukem is being removed from GOG (but he will probably be back)

Duke Nukem 3d

"Always bet on Duke" is something magazine writers would often use as the review strapline for a good Duke Nukem game, but seeing as there hasn't been one of them for ages, I thought I'd dust it off and use it to open this article. (I don't think it quite works here, but I'm too far down the rabbithole to change it now.)

I'm mis-appropriating ancient video game quotes because the Duke is being kicked off GOG.com soon, thanks to the rights to his games being bought by someone else. That someone else is Gearbox, and GOG say they're "in talks with the new rightsholders to bring [the games back] as swiftly as possible". But until they work out a deal, Duke's games will be gone from GOG, from December 31.

That's only in a few days' time, but if you were planning on picking up Duke Nukem 1 and 2, Manhattan Project, pinball title Balls of Steel, and of course Duke Nukem 3D, don't worry: they're currently on sale for chump change. You can buy them all as a bundle for 90% off, or individually for 75% off, until December 31. At which point Duke will be binned from the GOG catalogue (er, until they work out a deal to bring him back).

You will of course be able to keep playing the games; they just won't show up on the store.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.

Latest in FPS
A monster made of glowing skulls has a brinrevolver aimed at it in Abyssus.
Wield a brinerevolver as a brinehunter in Abyssus, the briniest ‘brinepunk’ shooter this side of the Mariana Trench
A mascot character from The Finals winks at the camera while brandishing a minigun.
The Finals new season is here, toting permanent team deathmatch and a giant minigun
quake champions classic gordon freeman mod
Gordon Freeman joins a retro pandimensional deathmatch in crossover mod Quake Champions Classic
Painkiller (2025) screenshot
Painkiller is back, and maybe they'll finally get it right this time
Helldivers 2
Arrowhead’s CEO got a call from PlayStation when he said players could save their money and wait to buy Helldivers 2 until the servers were fixed: They ‘asked me what the f*** I’m smoking’
A screenshot of Helldivers 2, depicting a Helldiver saluting while wearing an anthropomorphic facemask
The United Nations asked Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead if it'd give a talk on psychological manipulation: ‘Could we brainwash an entire community to fight for a fascist state? … Would we be okay with that? Turns out, yeah’
Latest in News
Scorched person with their hands on their head
Ghoul players in Fallout 76 are starting to place their Camps in the most radioactive areas of the map, and regular humans aren't happy: 'I had to inject 30+ radaway into my veins'
The "mind blown" meme from Tim & Eric.
Friendship ended with human race: Boffins declare the 'meme Turing test' has been passed, and AI is now making funnier captions on average than you useless lumps
Gale, a wizard from Baldur's Gate 3, looks very bloodied and very sad at the player while a celestial midnight blooms behind his depressed mug.
Baldur's Gate 3's latest stress test update fixes heartbreaking bug that caused a total party-wipe on Ironman Mode at the game's final boss, forcing dejected testers to restart the entire game
Two adventurers face off against a pair of undead scallywags in Frosthaven
X-Com creator Julian Gollop unexpectedly takes over sequel to sprawling board game adaptation, and you can try out the closed beta next week
Naoe and Yasuke pose against the backdrop of a burning building.
After Ubi came crawlin' back to Steam, Assassin's Creed Shadows blasts past a million players in under 24 hours and has already smashed Valhalla's player record
Gabe Newell in a Valve promotional video, on a yacht.
Valve CMO threatened the company would walk away from games if it didn't own the rights to Half-Life—'It wasn't an idle threat—we weren't going to take on all of the risk to make other people rich'