Conclusion to Interplay/Bethesda Fallout!

That’s right; Bethesda announced yesterday that a settlement had been reached in the lawsuit between Bethesda Softworks and Interplay Entertainment Corp. You see, Bethesda filed a lawsuit against Interplay seeking cancellation of the license granted to them to develop a MMO title based on the Fallout universe back in 09. Interplay didn’t meet the required conditions of their contract but still wanted to make the title. Bethesda was like “uh-uh” and filed a lawsuit. Under the terms of the settlement, the license granted to Interplay is now null and void. With that being said, ZeniMax, Bethesda’s parent company, will pay Interplay $2 million as consideration in the settlement and they get to sell the original Fallout Tactics, Fallout and Fallout 2 PC games till December 2013. Not bad. This whole thing is very interesting, seeing as how Interplay sold the rights to Bethesda in the first place, was granted the right to make an MMO, and now has to relinquish those rights back to Bethesda.

Robert Altman, Chairman and CEO of ZeniMax, expressed satisfaction on behalf of the Company with the resolution of the two lawsuits saying, “While we strongly believe in the merits of our suits, we are pleased to avoid the distraction and expense of litigation while completely resolving all claims to the Fallout IP. Fallout is an important property of ZeniMax and we are now able to develop future Fallout titles for our fans without third party involvement or the overhang of others’ legal claims.” –Press

Everything seemed fair at the end. While this is a win for ZeniMax, this seems like a loss for Fallout fans; a Fallout MMO is most likely not going to happen anytime soon.