Report: Bethesda nukes lawsuit against Interplay over Fallout MMO [Update: Bethesda disagrees, calls it 'ongoing']

[Update: A Bethesda spokesperson told Joystiq, "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." So there you have it – Interplay and Bethesda haven't made nice just yet. Original post follows.]

For those of you just joining us, former Fallout owner Interplay has been working on Project V13 -- a Fallout MMO in all but name -- going back a couple of years now. Bethesda – current owner of the Fallout franchise and developer and publisher of Fallout 3 – was understandably nonplussed by this fact, and the two companies have been going back and forth in court over the rights to use the Fallout name ever since. Well, according to Fallout fan site Duck and Cover, the two have made nice, with Bethesda dropping its attempts to block Interplay from having anything to do with the franchise.

The site reports that it spoke with "Frymuchan," an investor in Interplay who has provided updates on the proceedings since they began. According to legal documents furnished by him, both companies came to an unspecified agreement whereby Bethesda would allow Interplay to continue on its merry way with the franchise. He called this "awesome news for Interplay stock," opining that he believes "part of the deal was that Interplay drop their countersuit against Bethesda."

Bear in mind that neither company has issued a formal statement on the outcome, and while the investor believes "this will likely mean that V13 will be moving full steam ahead," we'll await word from Interplay before getting too excited. Heck, the beta isn't even supposed to start until 2012.

[Via VG247]

Reader Comments (22)

Yay, Stop the fighting.

Fallout MMO = Awesome!

Now it's back to Interplay, a company that hasn't made anything worthwhile in years, no longer has any of the talent that made any of the games that were any good on staff, given the Fallout MMO once more just to have it farmed out and given a basic pallet swap on Earthrise since they wanted to drop it off with Masthead Studios. This is pretty much a horrible day.

I completely agree with you. I wonder why no one else sees that this is a bad thing.....

Nobody's going to want to play a Fallout MMO after 2012, because anyone still alive will be living in a post apocalyptic wasteland. Great timing guys.

they could tout it as a simulation game.

eh, Bethesda can wait Interplay out. this v13 thing will probably fall on it's face in a massive failure resulting in them having to beg for an actual relevant developer to create a game and pay them for licensing just to keep them afloat.

Really, Interplay's only valuable asset is the Fallout name.

Hard to say for sure if they actually got it back though, considering the lack of fallout in the game title.

Well, I mean, Interplay created Fallout. They don't just "have" the Fallout name (not anymore legally anyways), they have the creative mind that came up with it (and they sold to Bethesda). Bethesda's the one really just "have" the Fallout name, they just bought it.

Get your effing facts straight and go think about Baldur's Gate. Shame on you.

@reinhart Interplay was only the publisher of the early Fallout games. They were developed by Black Isle Studios (the same developer behind Baldur's Gate).

Getting the facts wrong while chastising another for doing just that: Fail.

@alphamatrix Correction, Baldur's Gate was developed by BioWare and published by Black Isle Studios & Interplay.

Face, meet palm.

pretty sure my facts are straight Rein.

Interplay was associated to the original fallout games, but did not develop them, simply had rights to that franchise.

They gave the rights to Bethesda, who resurrected the franchise successfully, creating a top selling game and loads of DLC, and a GOTY edition

Interplay and Bethesda then got nasty with eachother. As a gamer, I would root for Bethesda, because they can actually do something with it, Interplay however, is using some noname studio to work on this V13 nonsense,

I'm not a fan of turning every freaking game in to an MMO. I much prefer episodic content vs monthly fees and hamster wheels/skinner boxes,

I understand the appeal of MMO's but if you notice the trend, it kills a franchise entirely when it turns in to an MMO.

Have you seen any xpacs for warcraft 3 or an announcement for warcraft 4 since WoW came out? nope, and you probably never will.

They would kill the fallout franchise for good if they took exclusive rights to fallout back.

This is why it needs to flop, imo.

Nice, but their stock's still at .07 or somewhere around the "ballpark" (there's not really a park left anymore), so...awesome news for Interplay stock probably means 5 more cents :p

This is a funny quote:

"this will likely mean that V13 will be moving full steam ahead,"

If I remember right the suit was basically started because Interplay had made little to no progress on their Fallout MMO in the time frame that they had agreed on with Bethesda.

The judge working on this case must be like, ":!@#$ these nerds... I just wanna play golf."

*shameless judge stereotype*

Way to be cool for like 5 minutes bethesda.

Well if there is any camp to root for on this, it's Bethesda imo.

They singlehandedly resurrected the entire franchise and brought many new minds to the fallout universe.

I know the concept of a Fallout MMO sounds cool to people, and it's obvious that both companies have interest vested in making a fallout MMO at some point, the problem to me, is that Interplay hired some no-name overseas developer to work on this MMO.

It's a dick move with our economy the way it is to outsource like that.

but Bethesda isn't really that much better to me, like many people said, "it's oblivion, with guns" and I wouldn't be surprised if the MMO they made turned out something similar.

The problem I have with the whole situation is that MMO's kill franchises from a genre standpoint, it's a permanent transition.

Take wow for example. Based on WC3:Frozen Throne. Have you seen any xpacs for wc3? have you seen any announcements for WC4? no? the warcraft RTS genre was sacrificed for the purpose of turning it to an MMO.

If they make a fallout MMO, you will never see another fallout game, you will simply see fallout themed hamster wheels/skinner boxes.

http://www.mastheadstudios.com/

Ok I wrote way more than just a url, not sure what happened there.

basically that link is for the devs of v13.

no names who's only work listed includes an mmo called Earthrise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYEx_x45ylA

Seriously, if you root for interplay, you root for failure.

Your facts aren't really strait at all.

Interplay sold the entire Fallout IP to Bethesda. They only retained the right to make one Fallout MMO, with the condition that they do it incredibly quickly. They had 2 years to get funding and have a playable prototype and 5 years to finish the MMO.

Bethesda didn't think that Interplay, at the time basically some guy in his basement, had any chance of getting anything together in 2 years. About 21 months later, using a middleware MMO engine and with a team comprised of several original Fallout developers like Jason Anderson and Chris Taylor, they delivered a playable prototype to Bethesda. Bethesda began ignoring their emails and dithering at Interplay's requests to announce the MMO. This was in mid-2009.

Several months after the 24 month deadline, Bethesda sued Interplay for the rights to the MMO back, claiming that they had not gotten enough funding and refusing to acknowledge that they had gotten the MMO build.

Regardless of how crappy Interplay's MMO turns out, this is sleazy underhanded dealing from Bethesda. I don't root for people like that.

I love Bethesda, but wish that Interplay could come back. I would love to see Descent, Baldur's gate, Planescape, Icewind, get some new games.

I know who "Frymuchan" is. He's the one investor that sold all his Interplay stock earlier today...

This is why we have to pay $60 a game, so that these idiots that run these companies can sue each other and pay marketing people to bash each other in the media. What an absolute joke.

Report: Bethesda nukes lawsuit against Interplay over Fallout MMO [Update: Bethesda disagrees, calls it 'ongoing']

Reader Comments (22)

Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 4:33PM Special Agent Steve said

Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 4:37PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 4:46PM LaughingTarget said

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Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 4:50PM Faceless Troll said

Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 5:18PM bedroompop said

Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 4:51PM Shauk said

Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 4:58PM Reinhart said

Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 5:15PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 5:19PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 5:32PM Shauk said

Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 4:53PM Reinhart said

Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 5:04PM Twist said

Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 5:22PM ShadowOp said

Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 5:25PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 5:41PM Shauk said

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Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 5:47PM Shauk said

Posted: Apr 23rd 2010 12:16AM chargen said

Posted: Apr 22nd 2010 5:57PM Fearmonkey said

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Posted: Apr 23rd 2010 4:07AM DerekUGA said

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