In 2000, Take Two Interactive purchased the exclusive publishing rights for Duke Nukem Forever and the existing catalog of Duke Nukem titles. From the press release:

"With the addition of Duke Nukem Forever to an already outstanding 2001 line-up of compelling PC content, which includes Oni, Tropico, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Max Payne, Take-Two and Gathering are heading into what should prove to be the most exciting and rewarding year in their history as PC publishers," said Larry Muller, Chief Operating Officer Chief Operating Officer (COO). "We are extremely excited about collaborating with Gathering of Developers and Rockstar Games on our strong line-up of next-generation titles," said Scott Miller, President and co-founder of 3D Realms. "Both the Gathering and Rockstar labels exemplify the attitude and commitment to quality that will make our upcoming titles hugely successful. It's going to be a great year." "The acquisition of the Duke Nukem franchise of products reflects Take-Two's and Gathering's ability to attract and develop excellent relationships with the very best talent in the industry," said Mike Wilson, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Gathering of Developers. "We believe that Duke Nukem Forever will be the most successful PC release of 2001, and we are especially pleased to be able to bring this game to market."

The game is not released in 2001, but a new trailer is released for E3:

The game has now been in development for six years. Take Two doesn't have much leverage over the cash-flush 3D Realms, and begins to wish for the game's release. George Broussard fires back, and is quoted in a story from CNN:

All we want to do is keep quite [sic], work on the game, and emerge later and show you what we're working on. We don't want hype. We don't want drama. We don't want Take Two saying stupid ass things in public, for the sole purposes of helping their stock.

The CNN article linked above describes why the fighting between the two companies has become so vicious:

Both companies are caught in a nasty Catch-22, though. 3D Realms says it is fully funding the game, which takes away any leverage Take Two might normally have. But 3D Realms can't shop the game to another publisher, no matter how frustrated it gets—despite Broussard's claims that "we'd find a new publisher so easily it isn't even funny."

Take Two buys the profitable Max Payne franchise for $45 million, which gives 3D Realms even more money to keep doing things their way. Three more years pass. In 2006, Take Two noted that the money budgeted for payment in the event of the completion of the game had partially been dispersed to 3D Realms. A large bonus was promised for the completion of the game. From the Gamasutra coverage linked above:

One other notable payment was the renegotiation of a $6 million charge due [to former publisher GT Interactive, now owned by Atari] upon delivery of the final PC version of Duke Nukem Forever back in March 2005. The epic delay of 3D Realms' shooter has meant that $4.25 million of the final milestone payment has already been paid, alongside the promise of a final $500,000 upon the commercial release of Duke Nukem Forever prior to December 31, 2006.

Prey finally sees release, having been announced alongside Duke Nukem Forever, and also suffering extensive production delays. This is from our review of the game from 2006. It almost sounds like we could have been talking about another title:

It was canceled, resurrected, and now it's finally out. When I play a game that has such a troubled development I find myself looking for clues to its age in the game: I search for old textures, see if the gameplay feels antiquated, or maybe try to see if the levels have been patched together by many different hands. After all, long development cycles make it easy for a game to lose its cohesion; it must be mighty tempting to want to push the thing out the door just to be done with it. This is also one of the few games to ship with the Doom 3 engine, which we all know was used so well in Quake 4. In case you're wondering, yes, I'm being sarcastic. I don't like thinking about how a game was made when playing it though; it almost feels like an excuse to dislike it. Ultimately, no one really cares how long someone worked on it, if it was cancelled, or how many engine changes it went through. They just want a fun game.

Here's a stub from a Duke Nukem Forever preorder. Three of the four companies on the stub no longer exist:

Ars Technica runs an April Fools gag-review of Duke Nukem Forever in 2006. Many sites fall for the gag, and run excerpts from the "review":

The game feels a lot more like an update than a true sequel. You'll take the firefights across movie theaters, strip clubs, underwater, all the places we remember from Duke Nukem 3D. I was glad to see that the shotgun provides that visceral BOOM that was sorely lacking the Doom 3 model. Finally we get a man's shotgun back in gaming. It doesn't end there though, the game introduces a sort of FPS fatality move, where after blowing someone's legs off you get to do a hyper-violent finishing move. My personal favorite was the one where you stuff dollar bills into an enemy's mouth before putting your gun under their chin. Bits of money and brain fly everywhere as Duke laughs and laughs...

New footage surfaces in December of 2007. From our coverage:

"Last Saturday we had our annual company Christmas party. It was a lot of fun as usual but it featured one special surprise. It turns out that several people had been secretly working late nights and into the wee hours of the morning preparing a special video for those at the party," George Broussard, director of the title posted on the official 3D Realms board yesterday. "They created a short teaser for Duke Nukem Forever." After promising to share the new footage today, the message boards across the Internet went insane with jokes and incredulous comments. Surely there can't be much to see, the punters cried. There is no way the game exists! After watching the footage, there isn't much to talk about. There are only quick blasts of what appear to be in-engine play between scenes of the newly updated Duke Nukem doing bicep curls, although the tentacled aliens still seem to be a large part of the game. The pig-based aliens also make a return from Duke Nukem 3D. "I'm looking for some alien toilet to park my bricks," Duke drawls, "Who's first?" Not the most grammatically correct tough guy on the planet, but it gets the message across.

The 2007 teaser:

In 2008, Jace Hall is given a look at the game. He likes what he sees.