3D Realms
3D Realms/Apogee Software Ltd.
Type
Private
Founded
1987
Headquarters Garland, Texas, United States
Key people
Scott Miller
George Broussard
Industry
Interactive entertainment
Products
Duke Nukem franchise,
Shadow Warrior and others
Employees
30[1]35[2]
Website
www.3drealms.com
3D Realms (legal name Apogee Software,
Ltd.) is a video game developer and publish-
er based in Garland, Texas established in
1987. It is best known for popularizing the
shareware distribution model and as the cre-
ator of franchises on the PC such as Duke
Nukem, and also the publisher of other fran-
chises such as Commander Keen and Wolfen-
stein 3D.
While the company is known as "3D
Realms", the legal name of the company is
Apogee Software, Ltd.. The name "3D
Realms" was initially created as a branding
label in July 1994 for use by Apogee which
would be dedicated to just 3D games (as Apo-
gee was then known for several styles of
games). However, shortly after this, 3D
games started to dominate the industry, and
Apogee decided to direct its focus on this
style of game; as such, "Apogee" was aban-
doned as a trade name in late 1996.[3] In July
2008, however, it announced that the brand
Apogee Software would be revived with new
games, but licensed to an external company,
Apogee Software, LLC[4]
Background
Apogee started in 1987 with the release of
Scott Miller's Kingdom of Kroz, which used
crude extended ASCII characters as graph-
ics. Nevertheless, the game sold quite well
and Apogee was born. In 1991, George
Broussard joined the company as co-owner,
bringing with him several games of his that
were previously released under the name Mi-
cro F/X.
Apogee published games by other de-
velopers in addition to its own in-house titles.
One of these developers, id Software, con-
tributed to Apogee's success with games
such as Commander Keen and Wolfenstein
3D, but later severed their ties with Apogee
with their release of Doom in 1993 (although
in its earliest stages, Doom was still an Apo-
gee title).
Shareware and the Apo-
gee model
Un