Interplay judged free to make a Fallout MMO and keep selling its trilogy
Fallout 3 developer Bethesda Softworks has failed to prevent Interplay from publishing and developing its own Fallout titles.
A highly-publicised legal wrangle between the two groups ended with a US district judge ruling in Interplay’s favour, court documents reveal.
Interplay was judged to be free to publish the three PC games Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics, and the trilogy package itself. Interplay is also permitted to continue work on MMO spin-off, called Project V13.
Bethesda has issued a number of complaints to Interplay, claiming the two should have consulted on the marketing of the Fallout Trilogy, and going as far as suggesting that Interplay’s trilogy shouldn’t have appeared at all.
Bethesda claimed that the contemporaneous release of the Fallout Trilogy was damaging to its own business, as it confused fans of the two brands.
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Bethesda also was claiming that the rights to develop a Fallout MMO should be handed over by Interplay.
This is a pretty messy situation. I respect the fact that Fallout was originally Interplay's baby, but they did SELL the IP to Bethesda. I have no problem that they are able to continue to sell the original series, but the creation of a whole new entry does make you wonder what is the purpose of selling and acquiring properties when stuff like this occurs. It is more like Interplay does not take it seriously, considering their continuation of Fallout and the lack of consideration for Bethesda. Obviously it was going to cause waves, it did and yet Interplay gets the upper hand, while the etiquette is lacking.
Your don't have to serve sour milk.
The thing is, it's not uncommon to sell partial licenses of IPs, split into different genres. Interplay, as far as I know, never sold the Fallout MMO license, only the single player license. If I'm not mistaken and this is really the case, Interplay has every right to develop their Fallout MMO. Whether they're using Bethesda's work to push their own title, is up to everyone to decide for themselves, but they did start working on the game way prior to Bethesda.
I do, however, fully agree that marketing their Fallout catalogue as the Fallout Trilogy is a cheap, yet legal, shot to reel in some confused customers.
