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Bethesda terminating Fallout MMORPG deal - Interplay

By Tor Thorsen, GameSpotPosted Apr 16, 2009 9:19 am PT

SEC filing reveals that the Fallout 3 maker and IP holder is ending fallen publisher's massively multiplayer licensing agreement due to "failure to commence full-scale development."

After years of silence, the Fallout massively multiplayer role-playing game has suddenly become major headline fodder. Two weeks after the once-mighty publisher announced that it had entered into a partnership with Earthrise publisher Masthead Studios to codevelop Project V13, the game's code name, its once-nearly-bankrupt publisher Interplay announced that the project is in jeopardy.

We'd like that MMORPG IP back, please.

In an April 15 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Interplay reports that Bethesda Softworks has announced its intent to cancel the deal that gave Interplay rights to make a Fallout massively multiplayer game. The deal was struck in 2007, when Bethesda--after having licensed the right to make Fallout 3 from Interplay in 2004-- bought the Fallout intellectual property (IP) outright. The Maryland-based company then licensed the Fallout MMORPG rights back to Interplay, provided that the latter company began developing such a project within two years.

Now, according to the 10-K, Bethesda and Interplay's deal is unraveling. "Interplay recently received notice that Bethesda Softworks, LLC ('Bethesda') intends to terminate the trademark license agreement between Bethesda and Interplay which was entered into April 4, 2007 for the development of a Fallout MMOG," states the filing. "Despite the fact that no formal action is currently pending, Bethesda claims that Interplay is in breach of the trademark license agreement for failure to commence full-scale development of same by April 4, 2009 and to secure certain funding for the MMOG."

"Although the potential damages are currently unknown, if Bethesda ultimately prevails and cancels the trademark license agreement, Interplay would lose its license back of the 'Fallout' MMOG and any damages resulting therefrom are unknown at this time."

When asked for comment, Bethesda vice president of marketing Pete Hines declined to elaborate. "As it's a legal matter, none of that is stuff we can comment on," he told GameSpot.

Hines also declined to comment on what would happen if the Fallout MMORPG license were to revert to Bethesda and its parent company, ZeniMax Media. However, it's unlikely that such a prized property would lie fallow for long. In August 2007, ZeniMax announced that it was opening its own MMOG studio, rumored to be working on a massively multiplayer spin-off of Bethesda's popular fantasy RPG series, The Elder Scrolls. In October of that year, the division scored $300 million in funding, although little has been heard about its project--or projects--since.

274 Comments

  • SRDET

    Posted Oct 31, 2009 3:45 pm PT

    Reply to hollow56771


    Any MMO that is going to have any real quality to it is going to require montly fees. There is server upkeep and constant new flow of content that comes out with MMO's. And the average rate would likely be the same as WoW, 15 a month. Which is hardly a stretch. It's one of the cheapest forms of electronic entertainment as it is.

  • hollow56771

    Posted Sep 16, 2009 12:45 pm PT

    I would've played it even if Fallout 3 didnt come out, as long as i dont have to pay every month like WOW

  • krazy-blazer

    Posted Sep 13, 2009 6:18 pm PT

    Darn Fudgers

  • KaBo0m

    Posted Sep 12, 2009 3:40 am PT

    Who can blame them for not wanting it to turn into another Duke Nukem Forever?

  • scyldschefing

    Posted Sep 12, 2009 1:13 am PT

    I find it interesting that the old Fallout games are still available at GOG.com and off of Steam. I might have thought that they would have been taken down as a part of this pending lawsuit...

  • GETAGIRLFRIEND

    Posted Aug 11, 2009 11:58 pm PT

    darn smokestackers. i was just thinking and yearning for an mmorg to have one to waste my life on and i immitialy only wanted someithing with fall out. darn it!

  • wiirkokonuts

    Posted Jun 23, 2009 8:35 am PT

    To:Lord Havoc

    Few years back, Interplay went bankrupt. To get themselves out of it, one of the things they did was sell the rights for Fallout to Bethesda for 5 or 6 million dollars. But, in that agreement were several little different agreements. One was that they had until, April 4, 2009, to start an MMOG for Fallout, if they so choosed, and start the project full scale, and they had 4 years from there to finish, and then give 12% of profits to Bethesda. They did, but since it has passed the deadline, it happens to be void for Interplay, having no rights left to Fallout at all. It would of been nice to see Interplay produce FOOL, but obviously that won't happen. But I wonder if ZeniMax can pull it off for, what they're saying, is an MMO for The Elder Scrolls. I guess we wait and see.

  • Vault_Ausir

    Posted Jun 2, 2009 11:13 am PT

    @ Lord_Havoc_

    You're wrong, Interplay is not the owner of the Fallout franchise anymore, Bethesda is. While they initially only licensed out the rights to make Fallout 3 in 2004, they later sold the rights to the entire franchise to Bethesda in 2007, then licensing the rights to make Falout Online from Bethesda.

  • moc5

    Posted May 20, 2009 3:54 pm PT

    To: LORD HAVOC

    All very well friend but on further thought, I would ask myself, 'How do you know this?' Are you an international 'gamer spy' who infiltrated Interplay and Beth Soft headquarters or a world reknown 'Super Hacker?'

    If you want people to believe what you write you might start with some credentials or referances from where you read this (hopefully somewhere reputable). You see, my friend, we do think, and therefore know that we cant believe everything that we read.

  • Lord_Havoc_ posted May 20, 2009 3:05 am PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)

    Lord_Havoc_

    Posted May 20, 2009 3:05 am PT (hide)

    Interplay is the owner of the Fallout Title, they sold licence for Fallout 3 to Beth-soft only because that way they would procure money for their Fallout MMO, Beth-Soft screwed them and now Interplay is left with nothing, and being blamed as well, truth be told, Beth-soft still haven't paid the revenues to interplay for the licence, how were they supposed to make the game with no funds ? Beth-soft wasted a lot of time with the games release so generally it's their fault for Interplay not even starting much of the game, but still there is already concept art, and they did start works on games engine, the game will be TPS (Third Person Shooter) like WoW, but the enviroment, weapons, armor, mobs, everything will be more close to the classic Fallout enviroment, for instance, Mutants will not run, altough they will move fast enough to get close to you if they run out of ammo, mobs wil llook for cover unline in F3 when mobs came out of cover to shoot you, AI will be more defensive than offensive, groups of mobs uppon "detecting" player wil lround up and try to ambush players, Perception Stat will do it's works, only if you have high enough perception you will be able to recognise a trap earlier, and it all depends on random roll for perception stat by the party (players), you can't say they didn't start the work, it's just Beth-soft screwed them on money.

    Seriously, you ppl should think before writing something.

  • jgdecimus

    Posted May 15, 2009 8:51 pm PT

    Err, didn't realize they were going to make a MMO version of fallout. If its anything like Fallout 3 thats pretty sweet. Too bad though, hopefully they will pass it on to a more able dev.

  • Egamer30

    Posted May 11, 2009 6:46 pm PT

    I dont know much about this kind of thing, but if it were at all possible i would love to see them switch to another company to coproduce this game, because simply I've been let down far too much. I always hear about cool new games that are going to come out in the future and a lot of the time it ends up not even making it to the beta stage. I think if they just found some other company that can keep there word and knows how to get a game done without compromising the quality of the game my gaming life would be perfect, for the next couple years or so at least.

  • Labouskie

    Posted May 6, 2009 8:34 pm PT

    At least we have New Vegas to look forward too, that will help ease the dissapointment of no mmorpg of Fallout. And I dont blame Bethesda one bit for what they are doing. In other words I agree with Phant0m13

  • Phant0m13

    Posted Apr 30, 2009 8:49 am PT

    It's sad to see something like this happen, but unfortunately it's not just about making video games. These companies have reputations to keep so they can provide you with decent material. They must keep these reputations to procure money to fund their development, and sadly when another company doesn't make good on a deal they must back out to find one who will. I wouldn't continue to do business with a company that hasn't started production as planned. On a more personal note, anyone who complains about how there are only eight voice actors for a 1,000 NPC game, then lets see you produce a game. You try and acquire the funding to develope, market, publish and ship a game, and see if you have enough money and time left to pay for 1,000 voice actors or at least more than eight. The fact is that Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout are amazing games, I'm sure their sales will support my statement, and they are large and beautiful games that Bethesda has put a lot of work and money into, to say that they left something out is just saying they fell short of perfect, and everyone knows there is no such thing as perfect. Bethesda has my support and I hope they continue to make the best "nearly perfect games"!

  • electronic_eye

    Posted Apr 27, 2009 9:07 pm PT

    I think it would be cool if Bethesda made the MMORPG, simply because I love what they did the Fallout 3. I'm really into MMORPGs, but if Bethesda made it, it would probably be the only one I would play.

  • moc5

    Posted Apr 27, 2009 4:22 pm PT

    Uh Shiftfallout? How do you know this? Do you work for Interplay? I mean that was a harsh acusation from a well respected game maker. If you said that about EA (Electronic Arts), I would definatly agree, Bethesda I have enough respect for to question your credibility.

  • Shiftfallout posted Apr 26, 2009 9:07 pm PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)

    Shiftfallout

    Posted Apr 26, 2009 9:07 pm PT (hide)

    I predicted this. Bethesda is a snake, after the company take over by Zenimax, it became more of a corrupt and immoral type of company. Bethesda did some underhand dealings to get the Fallout franchise, in order to keep interplay quiet they gave them unreasonable conditions to making the fallout mmorpg, which interyplay was trying to do before the franchise got taken. Bethesda didnt think Interplay would make any progress on that front, and when they did, they showed their true colors and are trying to void the contract. They never expected interplay to make a game with "their precious money making franchise", and they will do everything within their power to prevent that from happening, regardless of the contract. They never intended to honor the deal.

  • Humorguy_basic

    Posted Apr 24, 2009 5:32 pm PT

    The fact that Fallout: New Vegas is going to use the Fallout (or Oblivion really) Engine, I now have a few more doubts about it.Oblivion was a by-product of 'consolization', you only have to look at the 'making of' video on You Tube to see what it was going to be before they decided to go to console simultaneously. Because of console, the radiant AI was only half of what they were planning. Because of console they used 8 voice actors an one hour's music for a game that had 1,000 NPC's and 100 hours gameplay! In the YT video's most of the NPC voices aren't in the finished game, and they said Lynda Carter was to do the Nord voices only and she ended up doing the Orcs and others! Bethesda then went on to use the same voice actors from a fantasy game and used them in a Sci-Fi game. The Oblivion engine stands for 'consolization' as much as Morrowind and prior Elder Scrolls shout 'PC First!'. So Obsidian using the Oblivion/Fallout engine worries me. Worries me that despite their best efforts we will get another dumber Fallout than we would otherwise get.

  • Newps15

    Posted Apr 24, 2009 10:35 am PT

    COME ON does everything good have to be an MMO they tried to do it to Halo. they are doing it with kotor(knights of the old republic Star Wars) Now Fallout Come on stop it already Wow will be the only one that does it right stop trying to be like them

  • JohnnyDrama8

    Posted Apr 24, 2009 5:46 am PT

    I want a Fallout MMORPG playable on XBOX or PS3 please.

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