Interplay relaunches site, rehires original Fallout dev

Unfortunately, the 21st century wasn't kind to Interplay. Fargo left the company in 2002 when it was bought by French firm Titus Interactive. His successor as CEO, Herve Caen, presided over the company's slow financial disintegration, which led to the cancellation of the "Van Buren" Fallout 3, the closure of Black Isle studios, and the laying off of almost all Interplay staff.

Though written off by many as dead, Interplay hung on, with Caen and a skeleton crew hawking its marquee IPs. They got their first buyer in July 2004, when Bethesda Softworks announced that it had licensed the rights to develop and publish Fallout 3. Three years later, Bethesda bought the Fallout IP outright, giving Interplay a much-needed cash infusion and leaving it with rights to develop a Fallout massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

Now, a year after the Fallout fire sale, Interplay appears to have risen from the grave. The company today launched an all-new Web site at Interplay.com and opened a new office in Irvine.

Perhaps more importantly, the company laid more concrete plans for development of its proposed Fallout MMORPG, code-named "Project V13." Interplay has rehired Chris Taylor*, one of the developers of the original Fallout in the mid-1990s, to be lead system designer for the game. According to its careers page, the publisher is also hiring a technical director for Project V13 to oversee all aspects of programming for the project.

* Not to be confused with Gas Powered Games' Chris Taylor.