Legal Battle Brewing Over Fallout MMO?

When Interplay sold the Fallout franchise to Bethesda Softworks, they held onto the rights to produce a Fallout MMO. Bethesda may get those rights back by pursuing legal action.

No Mutants Allowed found an interesting passage in Interplay's recently filed 10-K. It seems they anticipate Bethesda will claim that Interplay violated their trademark agreement because they didn't begin development of a Fallout MMO quickly enough: "Interplay recently received notice that Bethesda Softworks, LLC ("Bethesda") intends to terminate the trademark license agreement between Bethesda and Interplay which was entered into April 4, 2007 for the development of FALLOUT MMOG. Despite the fact that no formal action is currently pending, Bethesda claims that Interplay is in breach of the trademark license agreement for failure to commence fill scale development of same by April 4, 2009 and to secure certain funding for the MMOG. Interplay adamantly disputes these claims. Although the potential damages are currently unknown, if Bethesda ultimately prevails and cancels the trademark license agreement, Interplay would lose its license back of the "Fallout" MMOG and any damages resulting therefrom are unknown at this time."

Interplay has been staffing up for a game called "Project V13," supposedly the code name for the Fallout MMO, but it's not clear whether they've begun "full-scale development" yet. Interplay did note in that passage that they dispute Bethesda's claims so it seems the courts will decide this one. Not exactly a promising start to the project. Makes you wonder whether Bethesda's got an eye on developing a Fallout MMO of their own.

Pete Haas

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.