Duh, I should have known the damn difference. My bad.

Anyway, my only real concern is if Bethesda will sell the classic fallout games in Interplay's place once they best them legally.

Gain profit from games they didn't even make just for having the 'Fallout' title?

Oh they'll do it if they can, nothing wrong with profiting from other's work in this situation.

History time: Interplay was having financial trouble in the early 90s before Fallout 1 was released. After that aside from games being released from BIS, other titles (ones without the BIS logo mainly) sold poorly, thus pushing their troubles even further. Fast forward to the early 00's, development on Baldur's Gate III began (this was before/after Herve took over, not sure.) Turns out they never had the license to develop the game to begin with (due to an error in accounting.)

Fallout 1 sold well enough back then, it was Baldur's gate that took Interplay off life support temporarily.

That's what strikes me as weird about the whole thing. Negative working capital would put any investor off but surely a company with an established brand name could have rustled up some investment, and by now be seen to have made a concerted effort to raise those funds for the MMORPG in the years that have passed. You could concievably have used the success of Falout 3 as a foundation for presenting the possible success of the title you're developing (conceptually developing at least) to potential investors.

Even biting the bullet and approaching some of the big-gun publishers, or independant producers, or other struggling software houses could have joined the cause and got to work in a last ditch effort to get something big off the ground, and to resurrect themselves along with Interplay. Maybe go out and employ talented individuals looking to get into the industry, offer some experience and professional guidance, a taste of what it is to be in the biggish time. Folk willing to work for considerably less than those already established in the industry. Young talented folk, students and enthusiasts and the like with nothing to lose and everything to gain by getting their foot in Interplay's door. It'd be something to put on a CV/Resume for them.

I wonder if these proceedings will force Interplay to reveal exactly what they were up to... it'd make pretty interesting reading. Unless it was 'not much really, we were just kinda trying to keep our heads above water'... which'd make poor reading.

So where did the financial trouble start? I don't know anything about Interplay's history, I only started playing their games a few months after I bought Fallout 3. I'm just wondering how they managed to continue developing games despite their finance worries.

Interplay's currrent financial troubles revolve around 2001, when they were bought by Titus Interactive. This occurred due to a financial decline from the heights they reached in the late 90s (particularly after the formation of Black Isle and the success of Bioware's Baldur's Gate). Things didn't improve under Titus despite various attempts to restructure the company and by 2004 it was near death. Selling Bethesda the rights to Fallouts 3, 4, and 5 in the summer of 2004 - and then selling them the IP outright in the spring of 2007, kept them on life support but their recovery was minimal.

Honestly, I don't understand what ZeniMax is trying to do with this ( if I am right, since it's the parent company.) But really, they should just leave the old fallouts be. I'm just starting to dislike Bethesda and ZeniMax myself, liking the old fallouts as much as the new ones. But they're classics, and they shouldn't mess with that.

Instead of sueing them cant they just get their writers some how in an agreement, fallouts writers would definately improve the game and thus make more money, and may bring back a few people who liked fallout 1 + 2 for its writing.

All of the people who worked on Fallout 1 and 2 are no longer with Interplay, save 1. Hell, the teams for Fallout 1 and 2 were largely different themselves. Anyway, it wouldn't be up to the 'writers' anymore than the sale of a restaurant is up to the waiters.

No matter how you stretch this, it's a pretty unethical move by Altman's lawyers. Todd is probably pretty pissed that people playing the old 'uns see exactly how sub-par FO3 is.

Unethical is intentionally breaching a contract. Seeking to prevent further damage is simply smart. I defy anyone to say they wouldn't do the same it it were they who had someone breaking a contract with them.

Ha. You can't be suggesting that 3 old games pose a threat to the behemoth Altman's PR department is.

Not sure if anyone else has ever thought this... But in some respects, I think there is an argument that Bethesda in some ways is the "current" Interplay in that they now hold the position in the market that Interplay once held. They're not a "First Party" developer ala Microsoft, Sony, Et al. They're not a "Top Tier Platform Neutral" developer like EA, Take2 and Activision/Bilizzard, but they do make a number of, well performing top tier games and publish a good deal more. They've even made the odd star trek game (not to mention Fallout of course)


How do you figure its unethical? Bethesda have done nothing but enforce a contract Interplay entered into. If Interplay didn't like the terms, they didn't have to sign.

(lets also not forget the flaws in Fallout 2- the crash to desktop bugs, the areas being cut to meet deadline, the left over quest clues with no quest... The originals were no pieces of perfection themselves)

In any case, the terms that are allegedly being breached seem fair enough to me, they aren't "Gotchya" clauses. Interplay (allegedly) agreed to have a certain amount of cash on hand to develop a MMO. They also (Allegedly) agreed to let the license owner of the fallout brand OK any material that used the brand. Brands are very valuable, and it would be negelegent of Bethesda if they didn't enforce their rights, likewise enforcing the contract to have a certain amount of cash on hand to develop the MMO also makes sense - You can't make a blockbuster game with pocket lint, much less an MMO. Enforcing this stops the potential weakening of the fallout brand by an inferior cut price rush job being developed due to lack of funds, and allows them to ensure that a game of a quality acceptable to them is made.

It's not the old games. It's the use of the franchise name. A name that Bethesda owns the rights to.

Personal opinion; I played Fallout. One of the few times I had to force myself to finish a game, but I finished it. I started to play Fallout 2. I never managed to make myself finish the game. It lost my interest very quickly. Sorry, but I would never have bothered with another Fallout game if it was the same as the second game. If I had to call a game sub-par, it wouldn't be FO3 I would pick. But that is my personal opinion.

It isn't unethical to enforce a contract. If the contract said the originals could still be sold by Interplay if the packaging et. al. was okayed by Bethesda first, and Interplay broke the terms of the contract, then, sorry, but the "unethical" part doesn't fall on Bethesda. Knowingly breaking the terms of contract is kind of a "not-good" thing to do, basically. Although the attorneys are probably thrilled about it. Job security, you might say.

In case people didn't read this when PS first posted it, I'll post it again as a reminder:

Everyone's entitled to their opinion. I'm just posting the one I'm most familiar with.

I don't mean this disrespectfully, but an opinion is one thing, an opinion explaining why you have that opinion is another. Why do you feel its inethical? Can you give us a bit more detail?

Because obviously, there aren't any possible, tangible, real monetary consequences to Iply rebranding the bundle. And it's implying that the clientele is hopelessly naive.

First and foremost Bethesda Bethesda seems to be responding to a contractual dispute with Interplay - its as simple as that. If Interplay could not meet the requirements of their licensing agreement then it's Bethesda's right to take it back. And it's not like Interplay had to uphold something bizarre or impossible, requiring that Interplay have money in order to make the game is sort of common sense - particularly with Interplay's recent history.

As for the second lawsuit, if Interplay agreed that Bethesda needed to approve any new marketing or releases of the original games then they should have done that. If Bethesda had no intention of approving anything Interplay could have taken them to court - instead it seems Interplay agreed to this with no intention of following it.

I don't see how the continued success of the original games could harm Bethesda, in fact it would seem to be good for them as well, particularly with New Vegas being released next year.

Exactly.

I was thinking about that as well. And with New Vegas in developement Obsidian's relationship with Bethesda bares some similarity to Bioware's relationship with Interplay back in the day.

Interplay was involved in more games (both as a developer and publisher) and genres than Bethesda. It may be best compared to Zenimax before acquiring id software, but I'm pretty sure that Zenimax is now larger than Interplay ever was.

Interplay was also credited with a revival of the CRPG genre in 1997/1998, and Bethesda has done something similar by continuing to demonstrate the viability of single-player RPGs a most in the genre have tried to jump on to the MMO bandwagon.

Several posts were just removed. Please make sure you keep the discussion cool-headed and constructive. We've posted plenty of warnings to this effect already and if people cannot head them we will lock this thread and bar the topic from the forums.

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Perhaps in your opinion it is sub-par or perhaps Interplay just wanted to cash in on F3's current popularity to make a few bucks on the side or even more are bitter that they never managed to do what Bethesda did with their own brand which was breakthrough to a mass market successfully.

The plain fact of the matter is that Interplay signed a contract stating they would do this and not that, then they tried to sneak under the radar what they agreed not to do. As I stated before, Bethesda is not the giant conglomerate trying to put the mom and pop novelty shop out of business; Interplay are the ones who broke their own agreement, no matter how little it may or not affect Bethesda it is Interplay who are in the wrong and they should be held accountable.

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You're right Atreides! This point has been repeated several times when folk have come in without any info on the goings on so far. Me thinks it'll continue on until we get some updates from the legal happenings and whatnot. Might be worth pinning these facts in the initial post of the thread, might save on the "lulwut?" questions being repeated. :goodjob: