14 DAY TRIAL // Bethesda, the company that now owns the rights to the Fallout franchise, has announced that it plans to continue its legal efforts aimed at blocking the former owner of the series, Interplay, from creating and publishing a Fallout MMO. This statement comes as, earlier this week, a judge denied a motion from Bethesda to block development on the title.
Pete Hines, who is the vice president at Bethesda in charge of public relations and marketing, e-mailed Gamasutra saying that “The court has declined to decide the issues at a preliminary hearing, and determined that the parties should maintain the current status quo pending a trial of the case in 2010,” adding that “We are confident that we will prevail on our claims against Interplay.”
Back in 2007, Interplay, a company strapped for cash, sold the Fallout franchise to Bethesda for 5.75 million dollars, maintaining the rights to continue selling the titles in the series it created while also continuing to work on a MMO called Project V13 as long as it could secure complete funding for the project before a certain date.
Earlier in 2009, Bethesda filed a lawsuit in which it alleged that Interplay was breaking the agreement by creating the Fallout Trilogy package, which is currently sold in North America, while also failing to secure the funds needed to complete the creation of the MMO. Bethesda asked a judge to block Interplay from continuing selling games and developing Project V13, with all the rights reverting to the ZeniMax owned publisher and developer.
With Fallout 3 being one of the gaming success stories of 2008 and with Bethesda demonstrating that it has the resources and respect for the series needed to create a true sequel to Fallout 1 and 2, it would certainly be interesting to see it creating a MMO set in the post apocalyptic world.