and so puts a close to Project V13
After a heated legal battle over the last few years which you could hardly call either companies finest hour – ZeniMax Media Inc today announced that a settlement had be reached for the lawsuit filed by Bethesda Softworks against the Interplay Entertainment Corporation seeking cancellation of a license granted to Interplay regarding development of an MMO which they obtained when Bethesda acquired rights to produce Fallout 3 and subsequent media. The claim was that Interplay had failed to met the conditions for the license and thus had become null and void. These conditioners were that Interplay had secured 30 million dollars in financing and commenced full scale development by April 2009. While I am not sure what happened in this regard as both companies have laid claims in regard to this – in Bethesda Softworks complaint they believed Interplay had met neither condition.
This settlement means that now that this license has become invalid, all rights to the MMO development revert back to Bethesda effective immediately leaving with Interplay no right to use the Fallout brand name at all in any of their game products – a series they originally developed in 1997 and since then became a big hit. ZeniMax is however going to pay Interplay a 2 million dollars as consideration in the settlement while each will bear its own costs of litigation.
In terms of the original three releases by Interplay: Fallout Tactics, Fallout and Fallout 2, Interplay will be permitted to have sale rights to the titles until December 2013 in which the rights to them revert and become property of Bethesda Softworks. If you get the chance, I would consider checking them out as while they are no open world extravaganza like Fallout 3, they are pretty good giving their age and how they facilitated a big company like Bethesda to purchase the rights to it in the first place.
In a separate matter “Bethesda Softworks LLC v Masthead Studios Ltd”, Interplay had claimed they had engaged Masthead Studios to develop the Fallout MMO under its license. Bethesda filed its separate lawsuit against Masthead to assert copyright infringement and other violations of Bethesda’s Intellectual property rights. Under the MMO license granted to Interplay, Interplay was not permitted to sublicense any rights granted without the prior approval of Bethesda, approval which had never been requested or granted. In responding to Bethesda’s lawsuit, Masthead denied that it had been using any of Bethesda’s intellectual property in developing an MMO. Masthead and Bethesda settled that second lawsuit on December 29, 2011. In the settlement, Masthead acknowledges it has no legal right to use any Fallout intellectual property, and agrees it will not use any such intellectual property of Bethesda in the future. No payments were made by either party as part of this settlement. The two settlements resolve all pending litigation over the Fallout intellectual property owned by Bethesda.
Robert Altman, Chairman and CEO of Zenimax had this to comment on:
While we strongly believe in the merits of our suits, we are pleased to avoid the distraction and expense of litigation while completely resolving all claims to the Fallout IP. Fallout is an important property of ZeniMax and we are now able to develop future Fallout titles for our fans without third party involvement or the overhang of others’ legal claims.
Essentially giving these events, all of Fallout’s intellectual property rights belong exclusively to Bethesda Softworks. While this is great for the company I can’t help but feel slightly disappointed that we might not see an MMO for the series in a while… and can’t help but be curious now as to how Interplay’s MMO version would have turned out. Will we still see titles released from Interplay? Personally I grew up playing a number of their titles including Stonekeep, ClayFighter 63⅓ (Even if it was poorly reviewed for the N64) and several other titles – so while they may have lost Fallout rights, I hope they continue producing games comparable to what made their original games so interesting. Given that Interplay seems to have gained at least some MMO development skills – perhaps they might even consider developing a completely new IP in the online game market (Given past titles, can’t say their plot and setting development skills are bad)…. time will tell.
Of course… the question is…. will Bethesda be announcing an MMO Fallout anytime soon? I would be also interested to see their take on Fallout as an online game….
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- Bethesda Softworks Releases XBox Live Demo for RAGE, PSN Demo to Come Soon
- EB Expo 2011 – Bethesda Softworks (EB Live Session 1) – Live Feed Archive
- The Release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was not a success…. … … … *Coff*
- Sentai Filmworks Acquires License for Someday’s Dreamers
