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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?!
If you had sold me your "legacy" for $5.75 millions I would feel quite right suing you if you didn't follow the terms of the contract. I know IP is a touchy subject here but Fallout isn't exactly "creative commons" material :)
And it is crunch time!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
According to wikipedia, Bethesda bought all and every Fallout IP when Interplay was unable to continue development on their version of Fallout 3 and had to lay off their main (PC) team in 2003.
TFS says they still retained their right to sell the games they do not own any rights to anymore, as long as they get marketing and packaging approved bei Bethesda. So they can still make money with their old games as long as it doesn't interfere with Bethesda's new titles and gets their approval - that is a pretty good deal for a game studio that probably would have closed down if it weren't for Bethesda, don't you think?
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!