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Bethesda Sues Interplay Over Fallout License, MMO Plans
Bethesda Softworks has filed a complaint with the District Court of Maryland to forbid Interplay from selling older Fallout titles. The complaint alleges that Interplay failed to hold up its end of an agreement that required it to submit marketing and packaging details to Bethesda for approval. In addition to that, Interplay was supposed to initiate full-scale development of a Fallout MMO by April, 2009, gathering at least $30 million in funding to work on the game. "If Bethesda prevails, Interplay would lose the rights to develop the Fallout MMO. There is little to show for the progress of the Fallout MMO in public venues, although many speculate that a mysterious title called Project V13 is in fact the Fallout MMO."
Interplay still exist?!
I know Interplay is nothing like it used to be when it came out with Fallout or Planescape:Torment, but suing the maker of these original games just because you have the rights to continue their legacy doesn't quice feel right.
:)
Now, I'm sure the lawyers don't see it that way. Interplay should be careful what they sign.
And it is crunch time!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Fallout MMO - From the People who Brought You Descent to Undermountain
I've bought the original Fallout games from gog.com a few months ago. And thanks to the lack of DRM you can't deactivate those anymore!
DtU featured "legendary Flame Sword of Lolth".
Also, "With the power of this sword, an infinite army will be at your command".
It foreshadowed the coming of the Anonymous!
How is that not worth all those bugs, and more?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
At least they aren't going after the Russians who created the most hardcore online PVP game (mod), Fallout Online. Unfortunately, the English server sucks unless you like building stuff constantly and resource gathering. :(
http://fonline2238.blogspot.com/
No-one involved in the creation of Fallout has anything to do with Interpay anymore, if I recall correctly, and Interplay certainly isn't owned by the same bunch it was in the mid to late 90s so this is just a case of two companies squabbling over IP rights they've bought up over the years. Colour me uncaring.
That Bethesda would ask Interplay to sign such a stupid agreement (re: packaging and marketing for the older games) and that Interplay would sign it.
First of all, what marketing and packaging? The marketing basically produces itself: Many people who played Fallout 3 are naturally curious about the first two games in the series, especially when they find out that Fallout 2 came out about a decade prior to Fallout 3. You don't need to "market" it - those who are interested in playing a 10 year old game are going to, and those that aren't interested aren't going to be convinced by a marketing campaign.
Packaging falls into the same boat. Does Bethesda really intend to produce new CDs of the first two Fallout games, put them into new packaging, and ship them to stores? I'd bet not -it wouldn't really be that profitable unless you charge a fair amount of money for the games, and convincing people to buy 10 year old games for more than 10 dollars is going to be a hard sale. In fact, most of the sales of the first two Fallout games that I have seen since F3 came out are from digital download services - which, of course, require no packaging, and most the time sell the games for 10 dollars or lesss.
Interplay is stupid for not trying to retain the rights to the first two games - Bethesda is a big gaming studio and has had some pretty sucessful games, so (back when the deal was going on) I would have been willing to hedge my bets on Fallout 3 being sucessful and boosting sales of the older games.
The MMO is a different story - Zenimax created an online division almost specifically to create the Fallout MMO, and it's pretty obvious that Project V13 isn't going anywhere.
Don't comment.
The best 3rd party Fallout mod team is a group of russians.
Great.... The Descent community has to wait another ten years before a glimmer of a chance that a Descent 4 will be produced... Anybody know how I can get my hands on the Descent rights, or who actually owns them..?
I applaud anything Bethesda does that makes those nma-fallout.com neckbeards whimper, piss, and bitch.
I probably should consider this a good thing see as how a good FO based MMO would ruin my life.
There already is a Fallout MMO game. It's still in beta, but it's fun to see how far fans can go when they really want something that the creators of a game won't give them.
FOnline - Come join the grief fest.
I think bethesda was pretty much ignoring them until fallout 1/2/tactics started being sold with labeling of "trilogy"
That implies it includes FO3, which it doesn't. The reason beth put that part into the contract was they didn't want interplay screwing up beth's marketing for FO3, and it looks like interplay just ignored that part of the contract and tried to screw them anyway.
Look, Bethesda forked over a pile of cash to rescue the franchise, and part of the deal is they _own_ it. If they didn't, then Interplay would have no problem suing Bethesda now over infringement now, would they? If there's nothing specifically exempting the Fallout MMO, then Bethesda has every right to demand Interplay keep up its end.