Gearbox? Dead to Me.

I'm not one to get worked up about this stuff (the Duke Nukem 3D shooting strippers to turn them into cash dustup was absurd) and I genuinely enjoyed DN3D back in the day. But, this, from Ars Technica's review of Duke Nukem Forever made me furious.

And that's before you come to the really offensive bits. Just in case you didn't feel like the game had adequately rubbed your nose in its horrific depiction of women, Duke arrives at a point where two nude ladies promise to lose their pregnancy weight from bearing their alien children, and they plead with you to let them live. (These are the same characters who performed fellatio on you during the beginning sequences of the game.)

The only way past this section of the game is to kill both women.

Update: I apologize for the confusion, as was pointed out in the comments if you wait long enough they explode due to the aliens growing inside them. You may now mock me for getting out my gun to try to escape the game just a little bit quicker.

In another scene, a woman sobs and asks for her father. You see, the women in the alien craft are being forcibly impregnated by the aliens, and during your journey, you hear a mixture of screams and sexual noises. After I accidentally blew up a few of these female victims in a firefight, Duke made a joke about abortion.

Shame on you, Gearbox.

How is it that not one single, solitary Gearbox employee stood up to say "No, I won't have my name on this and I won't work for a company that does" and walk out? If there are any, there's been no public report of it.

Gearbox, I hope this funds years of development of your original IP and dozens of luminous, great games...that I will never...fucking...buy.

Shame on you.

Update on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 7:52AM by Greg

Post corrected to fix mis-attribution to Wired rather than Ars Technica. Apologies to Ars and the author, Ben Kuchera.