InBlack wrote on Mar 21, 2012, 11:03:
Ive read a lot of hate directed at Fargo, that it was ultimately him who ran Interplay into the ground. Anyone know is that true or ultimately unfounded internet conjecture???

Dev wrote on Dec 29, 2011, 15:37:
No, he [Herve Caen] was the one that drove the company into the ground in the first place. He's sticking around to milk every last dollar from its corpse.

The company wasn't "sold" under Fargo. A french company Titus that was founded by Herve and Eric Caen, bought out interplay by purchasing a majority of their stock. Essentially a hostile takeover. That was in 2000. In 2002 they then forced out Fargo, and replaced him with Herve.

BTW, speaking of Fargo, he lent $3 million of his own money to interplay to try and get them through some trouble spots. You don't see that kinda thing being done by Caen bros.

By 2004 Interplay was evicted for nonpayment by the landlord and got in trouble with California gov for not paying employees and taxes.
Then the french holding company went bankrupt in 2005 under the Caen brothers leadership. Herve hired his brother back at interplay a couple years ago. Spending more money annually on their salaries than Fallout MMO Development.

Black Isle (arguably the best part of interplay making their best games) developed most of the best of their games 2002 and earlier. Caen shut them down in 2003 right before christmas.

The last decent fallout game (tactics) came out early 2001. Immediately after taking over, Harve Caen then pushed interplay away from PC games into doing crappy console games such as fallout brotherhood of steel.

IMHO, not only did he drive them into the ground, he consolified them, and took all the money from their corpse that he could.

Seriously, look at the financials. Interplay (aka the Caen brothers) spent a grand total of ONE million dollars on fallout MMO development in 4 years, while taking millions in direct salary (not counting bonuses and options).