Apogee, creator of Duke Nukem, secures $5M in funding

Apogee Entertainment, the game studio behind Duke Nukem, today announced that it’d secured a $5 million investment from eWTP Tech Innovation Fund. This is the first outside investment in the studio’s lengthy history, according to its creators.

Apogee is searching out talent in the indie game field, and it plans to use the investment to expand its team for that purpose. It launched one of its first-signed games, sci-fi survival game Residual, in 2021. According to its founders, it has since signed several more games. Its next game to launch is first-person shooter Turbo Overkill.

CY Chen, partner with Joyme Capital (which is affiliated with the eWTP fund), said in a statement, “We really love Apogee’s proven track record of discovering new indie studios and nurturing their international success. We’re honored to support their mission to find undiscovered talent and help create evergreen hits that can remain successful for decades.”

The studio has a long history in the games industry, being the origin point of Duke Nukem and the publisher behind Wolfenstein 3D and Max Payne. It was founded in 1987 by Scott Miller, and is also known as 3D Realms. Terry Nagy, a longtime collaborator of Miller’s, purchased the rights to the Apogee name in 2008. Nagy and Miller relaunched the studio as Apogee Entertainment last year.

Miller told GamesBeat in an interview that Apogee is searching out specific kinds of games to publish: “For us, it’s games that have some kind of innovation or unique factor. We don’t want to do copycat games. We’re also looking for games that have multiple interlocking systems that give more depth.”

Nagy also told GamesBeat that the studio is consistently impressed with the ingenuity of indie game creators they sign. Specifically, he cited the creator of Turbo Overkill, Sam Prebble, who got his start with the Doom 2 Total Chaos mod. Nagy said, “That type of innovation and skill is out there, and we want it.”