Bethesda didn't want to do a Fallout MMO says Interplay
Popularity of Fallout 3 caused the ongoing spat between the publishers
The president of Interplay, Eric Caen has been explaining a bit about the legal wrangling between themselves and Bethesda over the rights to the Fallout series.
Caen explained that initially, when Bethesda bought the license for the Fallout series they left the rights to create a Fallout MMO with Interplay with some legal stipulations requiring them to start work on any project within a specific time frame.
He began: "Herve [Caen] started negotiations with Bethesda to sell Fallout to them. My brother said: 'If you want the full IP, the value of it is $50 million.' They said: 'No way. Why $50 million?' We said: 'Because the MMOG strength of this universe is huge.' Bethesda said: 'We dont want that. Lets buy everything else but the MMOG. Do the MMOG.' They said that Interplay had to start development and by a certain time we had to have a full game in development."
"They bought everything," he carried on, "but left Interplay with the license to do the MMOG - under certain conditions, thinking that Interplay would never fulfil these conditions. But Interplay did. Spring 2009 - this is public information - Bethesda sends a termination letter to Interplay, saying: 'You did not fulfil your obligation.' So all the litigation is about that. I think Bethesda, off the back of Fallout 3s success, realised that Herv was probably right about the value. They said: 'OK, how can we get that without paying?'"
Fallout: New Vegas hit stores today on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 with Microsoft securing the exclusive rights to the game's DLC for now.
Thanks Edge Online.
