Bethesda & Interplay Fallout Settlement Nears?

An article on The Fallout wiki attempts to summarize the current state of the long-running legal dispute between interplay and Bethesda over the rights to the Fallout series of post-apocalyptic role-playing games. This includes a Q&A that mentions that this no longer includes any conflict over the "Fallout Trilogy." Here's that: "Both sides have previously agreed to drop this from the case (Bethesda raised it, and Interplay agreed). The case now just concerns future Fallout games." There's also this update stating that Bethesda has filed a motion to seal portions of the case, saying that this can often be an indication that an out-of-court settlement is in the works. Thanks Le Wastelander.
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Re: Bethesda & Interplay Fallout Settlement Nears?
Dec 29, 2011, 13:08
Dev
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Re: Bethesda & Interplay Fallout Settlement Nears? Dec 29, 2011, 13:08
Dec 29, 2011, 13:08
Dev
 
wtf_man wrote on Dec 29, 2011, 13:04:
And show me an article where Interplay proved that they raised 30 Million by April 4th 2009.
They didn't as far as I can tell. Here's the research I did in previous thread:
[emphasis added]



Link to previous post


But not if you follow the filings such as annual reports. Show me where it says they got $30 million in funding.

I'll tell you what it says.

a) It says they can't get anyone to loan them money and that they are having trouble getting funding.

b) It says they had income of 3 million for 2006, 6 million for 2007, lost 500 thousand for 2008, lost 1.5 million for 2009, lost 1 million for 2010. Hilariously it says the income is mostly from sale of back titles (aka selling fallout 1&2 on steam kinda thing).

c) Product development is specifically laid out as costing $514,000 in 2010, and $279,000 in 2009, and $328,000 in 2008, and a huge $18,000 in 2007. Product development is specifically mentioned as being for the fallout MMO. In what freaking universe is this full scale MMO development? That's enough for what, 6 employees? 10 if they are working dirt cheap? A total of $1 million in your specified 4 years? Not only is it nowhere close to any sort of MMO except a flash game on facebook, its not even close to the $30 million they are supposed to get.

This is a company that brings in a few million from back catalog sales and doesn't even spend most of it on the fallout MMO (which is the ONLY thing that has a prayer of saving them).

All beth has to do is bring this public information to the court, and show them, and its obvious they didn't do full scale development and didn't get the required funding.

As of December 31, 2010, we had a working capital deficit of approximately $2,877,000, and our cash balance was approximately $3,000. We cannot continue to fund our current operations without obtaining additional financing or income.

That's their current state.

You have to dig (they moved the info out of the annual reports into the proxy statement, probably to try and hide it), but you can find out that Herve Caen up through 2009 was making half a million (his annual salary was more than they spent in any one year on fallout MMO development) and thats only his base salary, not any options. Sad. And then when they finally did reduce his salary, he was still making more than they spent on fallout MMO in 2009. Even more sad? Someone named Eric Caen was hired as president for $120,000 salary right around the time of his salary reduction. I'm betting his brother or some such. There are NO other executive officers in the company. Just the Caens, still milking the corpse dry.

Oh and BTW, in case you say the funding is not in the annual reports:

We do not have any off-balance sheet arrangements

Note: Since interplay's webpage has been offline a while, you can google for financials if you care to read them yourself, or check here:
Text for your Link

Edit: And to all those saying "but ZOMG interplay deserves to make a fallout again!"... first off, there's almost NO ONE at interplay still who worked on the original. Secondly, they are NOT even making this one! They sub contracted it out to a "MMO studio" in Bulgaria named Masthead, that has exactly 1 title to their name... which is coincidentally a post apocalyptic subscription based MMO called Earthrise. One where one of the best reviews gave it a 5.5 ! And that was from an MMO fan site. Is that the kinda company you REALLY want making fallout MMO? Makes one wonder if interplay was able to cut a deal with them to just do a conversion with a reskin of their existing game for next to nothing.

This comment was edited on Dec 29, 2011, 13:16.
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     Re: Bethesda & Interplay Fallout Settlement Nears?
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