interplay-entertainment posts

The rights to the Fallout RPG franchise have been part of a big legal battle between publishers Interplay and Bethesda Softworks. This week the dispute left the court room and entered into the interwebs with reps from both companies basically saying, "We own the rights."

Eurogamer chatted with Interplay's president Eric Caen who admitted, "We sold the Fallout IP to Bethesda in exchange for a certain amount of cash and the right to do the Fallout MMO." However Caen claims that the actual IP agreement gave Bethesda to make just three Fallout games. Caen claims, "So they already did Fallout 3, then Fallout: New Vegas, and they can only do one more Fallout, 5, if the sale of the IP is cancelled by the court."

Not so, says Bethesda Softworks PR head Pete Hines. Chatting with VG247.com, Hines states, "We own the rights to everything Fallout. The licence is ours. Fallout belongs to us. That's what I'll clarify." It's clear that the two parties are well out of agreement which also means a protracted legal battle.

Fallout Online is still very much in stealth mode but the team at Interplay continues to release teasers about the background to the upcoming post-apocalypse MMO. Today we received a link to yet another such teaser which comes from the Pip-Pad, a apparently prototype model for Fallout's PipBoy info device.

The Pip-Pad some rather odd stuff inside of it including a transcription of an audio message, what passes for a novel except and an odd log entry from somebody. It's all rather strange and we are not sure how this will all link into Fallout Online itself. But at least its more interesting than your normal online newsletter promotion.

While there's been little info about Fallout Online's development from its team at Interplay, the company's president said in a recent interview that the MMO version of the post apocalyse franchise is set for a launch in the second half of 2010, with a beta coming in that year as well.

Eurogamer reports that in the new issue of Edge magazine that Interplay president Eric Caen states, "We have 90 people working on it. Even in January 2009, you were already able to move across the world." Interplay is still apparently in a legal fight over the Fallout trademarks with Bethesda Softworks. That's part of the reason for trickle of info about the game with Caen stating, 'anything we show will help Bethesda in their fight." Caen also decided to take a little shot against Bethesda's take on the franchise, saying "Fallout 3 was a little bit too serious – that's definitely not where we're going. Our Fallout MMOG will be extremely funny."

On Thursday, Interplay stated in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that Bethesda Softworks had dropped an appeal in its ongoing lawsuit against Interplay over the Fallout license. The dropping of the appeal means that Interplay is free to continue working on their Fallout MMO project (shown above in concept art form) and to sell their older Fallout games.

However, unlike what the fan site Duck and Cover stated on Thursday, Bethesda is still continuing to see this court action through. Our sister site Joystiq reports that a Bethesda PR rep told them, "It's an ongoing legal matter. I don't know where whoever reported that got their information, but it is ongoing and we are going to see how it plays out in court."

For the past several months, publishers Interplay and Bethesda Softworks have been engaging in a court battle over what Interplay can do with the Fallout game licence. Now fan site Duck and Cover is reporting that Bethesda Softworks has decided to drop their appeal of the lawsuit against Interplay.

Just a recap: Bethesda bought the rights to the Fallout game franchise from Interplay several years ago but gave Interplay a license to develop a MMO based on the property. However in 2009, Bethesda filed a lawsuit against Interplay claiming Interplay had failed to get Bethesda's approval for the marketing materials of a re-release of Interplay's old Fallout games. They also sought to terminate Interplay's Fallout MMO plans.

If Duck and Cover's info is true, Bethesda has now decided to drop the lawsuit which likely means that the Fallout MMO game (also known as Project V13) can indeed be developed. Indeed Interplay has already released some concept artwork for the game and some possible screenshots have been leaked as well. We have emailed Bethesda's PR folks for comment.

[Via Blue's News]

Interplay has been releasing some concept artwork on their message boards for the MMO game they are officially calling "Project V13" but is actually their attempt at a Fallout MMO. Now a fan site, The Vault Wiki, claims they have secured the first actual in-game screenshots of the long-in-development title.

The screenshots certainly look like the officiallly released concept artwork. The fan site claims they have received the screenshots from an "anonymous, but reliable source." In fact the site claims the screenshots were submitted by Interplay to prove that work on the Fallout MMO game is underway in their current court fight with Fallout's owners Bethesda Softworks.

It's looking like there might be trouble for Interplay's plans to make a Fallout MMO game. Today developer inXile Entertainment has announced that Jason Anderson, who previously was to be the creative director for Interplay's Project V13 MMO (which is almost certainly a Fallout MMO project) has left Interplay to join inXile to work on an unannounced RPG title.

Anderson was one of the original creators of the Fallout series when he worked at Interplay in the late 1990s. He then left to help form Trokia Games. When that developer shut down Anderson returned to Interplay in late 2007 to work on their MMO title. With his departure to join inXile (founded by former Interplay CEO Brian Fargo) one has to question the future of the Fallout MMO project.