Bethesda Buys Fallout MMOG Rights

The Bethesda Blog offers details on recent indications that a settlement is at hand in the legal battle between Bethesda Softworks and Interplay over rights to make an MMORPG based on the Fallout franchise. According to this, Bethesda will pay Interplay $2 million, and Interplay no longer owns any Fallout rights aside from two more years of selling their three previous Fallout games:
Under the terms of the settlement, the license granted to Interplay to develop the Fallout MMO is null and void, and all rights granted to Interplay to develop a Fallout MMO revert back to Bethesda, effective immediately. Interplay has no ongoing right to use the Fallout brand or any Fallout intellectual property for any game development. ZeniMax will pay Interplay $2 million as consideration in the settlement, each party will bear its own costs of the litigation, and Bethesda will continue to own all Fallout intellectual property rights. Interplay will be permitted to continue to sell the original Fallout ®Tactics, Fallout® and Fallout® 2 PC games through December 2013, after which time all rights to market those games revert to and become the sole property of Bethesda. Under the original agreement pursuant to which Bethesda had acquired the Fallout property, Interplay was granted certain merchandising rights to sell those original Fallout games, but those merchandising rights will now expire on December 31, 2013.
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Re: Bethesda Buys Fallout MMOG Rights
Jan 9, 2012, 20:04
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Re: Bethesda Buys Fallout MMOG Rights Jan 9, 2012, 20:04
Jan 9, 2012, 20:04
 
Parallax Abstraction wrote on Jan 9, 2012, 19:58:
Cutter wrote on Jan 9, 2012, 19:53:
Hah! Called it! I knew it was going to be less than 5 mil. I reckoned somewhere around the 2-3 million mark. So Herve and his bro get a mil each and can now fuckoff die and never darken gaming's doorway again.

That's probably exactly what will happen. None of that money will go into paying off the numerous creditors that Interplay has or actually attempting to develop anything, the Caen crooks will take it out as "bonuses" or "reimbursement" and like they've been doing for years, they'll keep drawing a salary out of Interplay until it runs out of cash, put it in Chapter 7, take a cut of the remaining assets and go retire back in France somewhere. Meanwhile, I'm still on the hook for a small business loan until 2014 because we did everything honestly, couldn't make it work and the bank made us personally guarantee it. I'm happy to live up to my obligations because I'm honest but it's hard not to be bitter when you see scumbags like this beating a dead horse and getting richer off it.

That's nothing. Think of Bush Jr.. He put more than one company under and came away smelling like roses. Then a bunch of dumbshits elected him president.

This feels exactly like a payout to these jerks. Bethesda probably just asked them one day: "OK, how much can we give you two assholes to stop lying about this game and just go away? A mil each? Done. Now fuck off."
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