This broke on Friday, but RPS were dividing and conquering across the world, requiring Kadayi – cheers! – to bring it to our attention. In short, Gamasutra reports that the coldness between Interplay (Original Fallout IP holders) and Bethesda (Purchaser of the Fallout IP) has crossed into an actual legal suit. However, it isn’t about the MMO situation, as described in the link. It’s to prevent any further distribution of the compilation Fallout Trilogy’s sales via Digital Download companies causing “immediate, substantial, and irreparable harm”. Do read the whole thing, and a little industry thought below…
I actually don’t really believe this is primarily about selling the older games. This is a high-level tactical battle between companies, with one trying to secure rights. The fact that – according to Bethesda – that they didn’t actually get their approval for packaging, advertising and promotional material means that Interplay are in breach of contract. This will be a step towards them acquiring the MMO rights back.
(Bethesda bought the IP, then leased the rights for the MMO back to Interplay. Seriously, go read the full story)
In other words, as pure business, this strikes me as a pretty smart.
As a developer of Fallout games, this is openly outrageous.
I’m not even someone who is particularly devoted to the original games, and I’m outraged. Bethesda’s buying of the rights was controversial, but the developers have constantly said how big fans they were of the original games. To my mind, the case counters that. This case simply says the company believes that anyone having access to those games would confuse and devalue the brand – because they’re using the original art which hasn’t been through Bethesda’s hand. At the best, it says they’re of historical interest, but pretty much should be kept in museums. Fundamentally, they’d rather people not have the chance to play Fallout at all if it’s not in a Bethesda-approved box.
Obviously, this almost certainly came from the business side, but it’s put everyone on the Fallout 3 team in an enormously difficult position, no matter what the reason. The next time they talk about how much they like Fallout, someone is going to say “You like it so much that you stop people from buying and playing it?”. Because answering “That wasn’t about the game – that was about the logos” implies that you care far more about the logos than the actual games themselves. And what gamer would argue that?
Related Stories:
postman: Well ya see, companies are made up of people, and when none of the people who made a company any good are left, you don’t really have the same company.
i.e. Interplay.
I just want to point out that my Fallout Collection (1, 2, T) says, on the front of the box, “Fallout 1, 2 & 3″. I’m not sure when the box was made and sent around, but I bought it not long before Fallout 3 was released, and I knew a fair bit about it (no I did not think I was buying Fallout 3 with two other games for $15).
This whole thing is so ironical, they base their new game around an existing ip they even call it an iteration of that existing ip, then it appears they want to remove the existance of previous ip. Part of their marketting and the merit was based on the previous games and the fans that they had.
So in the future when someone ask where are the first two, it’ll be shhhh they do not exist, we do not speak of them.
Jesus.
Interplay, as it is now, is one guy in an office. One guy who was partially responsible for destroying Interplay in the first place. Now he spends his days building hype and bilking investors for development projects that will never happen, and collecting money from old franchise material of which the original creators don’t see a cent off. It’s a scummy old man making tons of money while producing absolutely nothing, continuing to be the scumbag he always was. So much so that he thought nothing of signing a contract to get a big fat cheque from Bethesda, then turning around and making more money by completely breaking the terms of that contract.
And yet people are defending this guy over Bethesda. Christ, the internet is stupid.
@kuddles
“And yet people are defending this guy over Bethesda. Christ, the internet is stupid.”
Well, yeah. Because a lot of people don’t like the way Bethesda makes games.
It’s not about the feasibility of Interplay as a developer, it’s a backlash against the direction the industry is heading.
It’s the difference between the last Simcity to be made by Maxis as a wholly-owned subsidiary of EA (Simcity 4) and the first Simcity to be officially developed by EA itself (Simcity: Societies).
It’s the difference between the Command & Conquer series before and after Westwood was liquidated by EA. In the eyes of the discerning fan it’s the difference between “my baby” and “my cash cow.”
I personally did not like FO3, and found its plot, story and gameplay (it really is a very clunky FPS) to be inferior to its predecessors. I don’t think FO should be made for FO’s sake, so I’m not about to push Bethesda down anybody’s throats just because they have the ability to make more FO games.
That’s the eyes through which I see this lawsuit.
All I care about is that the old Fallouts remain available from all digital distribution sources that offer them. Nothing excuses pulling games from people who’ve already bought them, and pulling the ability to buy them is pretty lame too.
@Nalano:
It doesn’t seem like you’re actually looking at the lawsuit at all.
All I care is that Bethesda will release their version of a MMORPG flop and it will go to the garbage bin of gaming history. Interplay should be dead by now, but if they ever comeback for real … it would be simply awesome. That’s the only thing that Herve is not allowed to miss.
Oh come on, its not like the actual developers at Bethesda have any say in this; they probably do really love the original fallout games. Their legal department, conversely, really loves money. Three guesses who calls the shots.
Putting aside the fact that Trilogy means a set of three related works, and not parts one, two and three of something, is there really any name that you can give their boxed set that isn’t going to cause hypothetically addled parent to think that if they’re buying a three game collection of fallout, that they’re buying fallout 3 as part of it?
Short of “Fallout Threesome: the boxed set that does not contain Fallout 3!” I can’t really think of one.
It’s pretty much Bethesda’s fault for calling “Fallout 5″ “Fallout 3″ :)
Interplay >> Bethesda
Isometric RPG’s >> First person RPG’s.
Cue flame war.
Things took a turn for the [url=http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/60435]bizarre[/url], Interplay supposedly planning to release the Fallout MMO on consoles and handhelds, as well as saying that Project V13 is actually a different game.
What can I say, both companies are working pretty hard for the prestigious “scumbag of the year” award.
Yeah, HTML tags. Kinda forgot about that. Whatever, you’ll figure it out.
I still don’t understand why Bethesda needed the Fallout IP. Why not just create their own? It’s not like they kept the Fallout 1/2 fans anyway…
sure they did Kamos, or are you going for the “no true scotsman” bonus points?