Fallout Online - Court decision grants Bethesda rights to Fallout MMO IP

**Alundil** · 01-23-12, 02:05 PM

Court Rules That Rights Belong to BethesdaFOOL Fallout Online News - MMORPG.com

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.

Thumbs up? Or Down?

**Red_Lizard2** · 01-24-12, 07:15 PM

I don't know a lot about it all, but isn't Obsidian part of Bethesda? That would seem to be the main reason to thumb up it, as Obsidian I guess has some of the guys who worked on the original Fallout games. Granted that is expecting Bethesda to allow them to work on it, and actually works on it in general.

(Basically, what people say over on the fallout forums, is Obsidian wrote a better story, while Bethesda created a much better map *shrugs*)