Those fanpages are usually stuffed with nonsense though; beyond reasonable doubt there's literally zero information that's even plausible to have come from 3DRealms themselves. It's only rumors.

3DRealms has always been independent enough to still cover salaries with lots of zeroes involved. Why financial problems right now? A huge BBQ and party? No problem. Even a party to celebrate DNF's upcoming release was already planned or perhaps that BBQ was exactly that?

Anyways, 3DRealms already sold the license to publish many many years ago, this is a well known fact, said by 3DRealms themselves. They obviously still got the IP and don't intend to ever sell that.

But Take-Two, who was going to publish DNF, is going to sue Apogee for all this, apparently they're not to happy about their 12 million dollar investment (for publishing only, no financial contract) disappearing in thin air.

I think it's obvious Apogee has been definitely thinking about either yet another restart of DNF or simply a continuation of development of 'their' product; otherwise they really really would have sold the IP for that title a very long time ago.

I don't think releasing DNF is their top priority anyways, I think they still want to release 'when it's done' like they've always said.

Anyways, I am quite sure it's not a joke, even though the websites are back online. Of course, I'd be glad if I turn out to be wrong about that as I don't know either. It would be crazy though if it turns out to be a marketing thing.