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Rebecca Heineman has died

2025-11-181:25980193www.pcgamer.com

Heineman's cancer fundraiser is now collecting for her funeral.

Game developer Rebecca Heineman has died after being diagnosed with cancer last month. The news was shared to Bluesky by Heineman's friend, Heidi McDonald, while the most recent post on Heineman's GoFundMe is a goodbye message stating that her health was rapidly deteriorating, and she was entering palliative care. Heineman was 62, and the GoFundMe will remain live to help her family make final arrangements.

Born in 1963, Heineman initially made a mark on the industry by winning a national Space Invaders tournament in 1980 in New York, becoming the first formally recognized US champion of any videogame. She went on to have a far-reaching career, being credited on 67 games according to MobyGames.

Heineman co-founded Interplay in 1983 alongside Brian Fargo, Jay Patel, and Troy Worrell. The developer and publisher was the source of many foundational PC games, including Wasteland, Fallout, and Baldur's Gate. Heineman designed and programmed a number of games at Interplay, with her most prominent design credit being The Bard's Tale 3: Thief of Fate.

Heineman's friend and colleague from Interplay, Brian Fargo, shared a remembrance of the developer on X. "Rebecca Heineman sadly passed away," Fargo wrote. "Known her since the 80s when I'd drive her to work, one of the most brilliant programmers around. A real gut punch earlier today when she messaged me: 'We have gone on so many adventures together! But, into the great unknown! I go first!!!'"

Later, in the '90s and 2000s, Heineman made a name primarily as a programmer, particularly on ports like the Macintosh versions of Wolfenstein 3D, Baldur's Gate, and Icewind Dale. The saga of Heineman overcoming a deranged businessman to solo program the ill-fated 3DO port of Doom in mere weeks has become a bit of an internet legend: Here's Digital Foundry and Heineman herself recounting the tale.

Heineman publicly came out as transgender in the 2000s, and was married to fellow games industry legend Jennell Jaquays. Heineman was the recipient of Gayming's 2025 Gayming Icon award, with the site writing that "her advocacy for LGBTQ+ inclusion, accessibility, and diversity in tech has inspired countless developers and players."

Jaquays died of complications from Guillain–Barré syndrome in January 2024, and Heineman was blindsided last month by an aggressive cancer diagnosis. She turned to GoFundMe to help with the costs of treatment, where fans, friends, and industry peers showed up to support the developer.

Heineman shared the message last night that her health was rapidly declining.

"It's time. According to my doctors. All further treatments are pointless," Heineman wrote. "So, please donate so my kids can create a funeral worthy of my keyboard, Pixelbreaker! So I can make a worthy entrance for reuniting with my one true love, Jennell Jaquays."

Game developers have begun sharing their own condolences and remembrances in the wake of Heineman's death.

Rebecca was one of the founders of Interplay and programmed & designed for some of the most influential games of my youth, notably Bard's Tale I & III and Wasteland. She will be missed.

— @jesawyer.bsky.social (@jesawyer.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-11-18T00:17:03.191Z

What a remarkable human, and what a remarkable thing to know that she passed bemused at reading her own eulogies. Rest in peace, Rebecca. Thank you for everything.

— @ramiismail.com (@ramiismail.com.bsky.social) 2025-11-18T00:15:53.662Z

Rebecca was in my life because she reached out to me, a stranger, because she'd caught wind of a layoff I was impacted by. Her achievements were great, and so too was her kindness.

— @jyoungman.bsky.social (@jyoungman.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-11-18T00:15:53.699Z

Rest well, you legend, you pioneer, you wonderful soul. I'm lucky to have known you, though briefly. Please share her legacy by reposting Heidi's message. 💖

— @caseymongillo.bsky.social (@caseymongillo.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-11-18T00:15:53.712Z

in the early 2000s Rebecca took the time to chat over IRC with a teenaged and gender-confused Me on the practicalities of transition - in a time where being out as trans online was something that could get you socially ostracized. I owe her a lot for that and only hope I can pay it forward.

— @moomanibe.bsky.social (@moomanibe.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-11-18T00:15:53.675Z

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Comments

  • By AdmiralAsshat 2025-11-1813:563 reply

    Huge loss to the community. She was, by all accounts, an amazing programmer. I remember when she uploaded the source code of her Doom 3DO port she indicated that she had to write her own string lib because the base one sucked:

    > I had to write my own string.h ANSI C library because the one 3DO supplied with their compiler had bugs! string.h??? How can you screw that up!?!?! They did! I spent a day writing all of the functions I needed in ARM 6 assembly.

    https://github.com/Olde-Skuul/doom3do

    I can't even imagine the level of skill required to just say, "Fine, I'll write MY OWN string lib!" while chasing a deadline.

    As an aside...I wonder what will happen to her personal artifacts. There was a media blitz awhile back when Tim Cain said he doesn't have the original source code to Fallout because he was "ordered to destroy it" by Interplay when he left. But Becky then chimed in to say that she did have a surviving copy, because she was a founder. [0] I hope someone else on her behalf would be able to continue that effort, but I worry that with her death, Bethesda would assert that no one else has "legal standing" to do so.

    [0] https://thisweekinvideogames.com/news/fallout-1-2-source-cod...

    • By archon810 2025-11-1817:012 reply

      Not just "write my own string lib", but "write my own string lib in assembly"! Wow.

      • By DonHopkins 2025-11-1817:33

        Not just strings but burgers too!

        https://github.com/Olde-Skuul/burgerlib

        Welcome to Burgerlib

        The only low level library you'll ever need

        Burgerlib is a low level operating system library that presents a common API that operates the same on numerous mobile, desktop, and video game platforms. By using the library, it will allow near instant porting of an application written on one platform to another.

        Burgerlib is not meant to be considered an engine, it's a framework on to which an engine can be created on top of and by using the common API, be compatible on dozens of platforms.

        Filenames and paths are standardized, all text is UTF-8 regardless of platform. Display, input, audio, music, math, timers, atomics, and typedefs operate the same.

      • By peterfirefly 2025-11-196:301 reply

        it's not as hard as you seem to think.

        plenty of people have implemented strcpy(), strlen(), etc for embedded-like platforms.

        • By alexjplant 2025-11-1915:09

          "Hard" by whose definition? I had to implement those in MIPS assembly and write a hash table in x86 assembly in school but I don't think I could do that today without a good deal of refresh. I'd venture to say that most software developers today wouldn't even know where to begin because most software written today targets a VM that doesn't expose pointer arithmetic.

    • By markus_zhang 2025-11-200:07

      Now that we shall read and comment her code and let it live forever.

    • By amypetrik8 2025-11-193:28

      [flagged]

  • By zeta0134 2025-11-182:463 reply

    Rebecca was well known in emulation circles for her high quality work on various games of the era, often pushing the hardware in unusual ways. This article is one of my favorites, detailing the wacky tricks she used to get Another World's 3D rendering system running acceptably on a Super Nintendo

    https://fabiensanglard.net/another_world_polygons_SNES/

    Rest in piece, you absolute legend.

    • By rob74 2025-11-189:211 reply

      She also somehow pulled off the port of Doom to the hopelessly underpowered hardware of the 3DO in just a few weeks, after others had tried and failed for much longer than that. The final release had a reduced viewport and a bad framerate, but the background music was great (recorded with a band and stored as audio tracks on the game CD).

      https://github.com/Olde-Skuul/doom3do

      Also, 62 years is much too young! And one month from diagnosis (because of being short of breath) to dying is really rough - although there's a lot of progress on cancer treatment, some forms have symptoms at such a late stage that they're unfortunately still a death sentence...

      • By siev 2025-11-189:35

        Gonna link SSFF's enjoyable telling of the 3DO port story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxF1_wg2d_Q

        I will never get over the company CEO sending here PNGs of new weapon models and saying, essentially, "Yeah so you can just copy & paste these into the game, right?"

    • By netcoyote 2025-11-1823:121 reply

      Hey, I got to see this code!

      Back when Blizzard was still Silicon & Synapse, we got Rebecca's source code to Another World SNES from Interplay to use for a game we would develop, and they would publish, and I was the engine programmer.

      I remember reading the source code, which was ... sparsely documented, and wondering what was going on. Like "you're writing to the DMA registers?!?"

      The code was amazing, because it has has to draw polygons into 8x8 pixels cells that are stored in planar format at 60FPS. On a 3.5 Mhz processor. Blew my mind.

      Incidentally, the game was called "Nightmare", and later became "Blackthorne", which was released for SNES, Genesis, and PC.

      • By LennyHenrysNuts 2025-11-191:24

        Yeah, Another World was an incredible feat with the hardware we had at the time.

    • By edf13 2025-11-186:012 reply

      Today I learned...

      "Super Fami-Com ("FAMIly COMputer")"

      Doh!

      • By djmips 2025-11-189:51

        It was a sequel to the Famicom.

      • By skhr0680 2025-11-198:58

        Commonly known as the Su-Fami!

        Compare Nintendo 64 = Roku-Yon (Six-Four) and PlayStation = Pure-Sute

  • By thesuperbigfrog 2025-11-182:297 reply

    Many years ago I played one of her works, Bard's Tale 3: Thief of Fate and enjoyed it very much.

    It was a masterful blend of RPG, dungeon crawl, and puzzles and had a memorable soundtrack.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru5kg35dNso

    Having a bard in your party let you choose a soundtrack and their songs brought magical effects. For example, the Rhyme of Duotime let your party attack more frequently in combat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oR4j7w4FIY

    BT3 is available on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/msdos_The_Bards_Tale_3_-_Thief_O...

    • By trashface 2025-11-1819:071 reply

      Interesting, I didn't know BT3 was by a different author, it definitely had its own vibe distinct from the first two, which this guy wrote (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Cranford). I liked them all though.

      The steam remasters are incredibly faithful to the originals - right down to the timing and flow of the turn-based combat. Makes me wonder if they are emulating the original code somehow.

      • By moregrist 2025-11-1822:21

        I believe they’re using the PC ports, running in something like DosBox or FreeDOS

    • By sosborn 2025-11-182:32

      The original Bard's Tale was my first RPG and I've been hooked ever since.

    • By mitb6 2025-11-183:10

      BT3 was wonderful, lots of nostalgia for me. Sad to hear of her passing.

    • By slfnflctd 2025-11-1815:24

      The first trilogy (including BT3) was also remastered about 7 years ago and released on Steam, it's like $15 and has many quality of life improvements.

    • By einpoklum 2025-11-1811:461 reply

      It seems Bard's Tale 3 can be played on the DosBox emulator:

      https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=188&letter=B

      ... which is available for many platforms, including Windows and Linux:

      https://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1

      although the latest version of DosBox seems to be from 2019, so maybe others can suggest a more actively-maintained emulator.

      • By 1313ed01 2025-11-1812:042 reply

        DOSBox-X is a port that is actively developed and has many features missing in vanilla DOSBox.

        There are a few other ones as well. DOSBox Staging is one. Magic DOSBox seems to be the most popular on Android. There is some iOS port as well.

        • By einpoklum 2025-11-1818:311 reply

          That sounds promising. Do they also have a "compatibility by game title" database?

        • By QuercusMax 2025-11-1817:41

          "DOSBox Staging" is such a weird name for that fork / continuation.

    • By senectus1 2025-11-184:281 reply

      ahh i have fond memories of this game... and the silly anti piracy attempts (decoder ring) they shipped it with.

      • By slfnflctd 2025-11-1815:221 reply

        In middle school, a friend and I 'cracked' that decoder ring by copying all the info by hand on to paper so we could both play the game from one store bought copy because we were poor. I don't think we ever finished the game, but it's still one of my happiest early gaming memories.

        They remastered all three of the first Bard's Tale games a few years ago and released them on Steam with many quality of life improvements-- I bought the set without a second thought even though I know I will probably never take the time to play it all the way through. I've spent a few dozen hours on it so far, though.

        • By mrits 2025-11-1819:10

          It is hilarious to think if you could beat BT3 you could also crack the decoder ring

    • By mrits 2025-11-1815:14

      She was originally chosen to do a remaster of the series. This was eventually reassigned to another publisher.

      If you purchase Bards Tale 4 you get the remastered 1,2, and 3 for free.

      I have played BT 1 every year or so since the late 80s.

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