14 DAY TRIAL // When Bethesda bought the rights to Fallout from Interplay, back in the day, it agreed on allowing the company that originally developed the series to create a MMO based on the license.
Since then, Bethesda has released the critically and commercially successful Fallout 3 and is preparing to launch the third piece of DLC for the title. Meanwhile, Interplay did not even manage to get past the initial development stages in its quest to create a Fallout MMO. So, Bethesda seems to be thinking of denying Interplay the right to produce that game, probably preparing to create such a project itself.
Kotaku has spotted a 10-K financial report in which details regarding the deal are exposed, showing what Bethesda might do in the coming months. Apparently, there's no problem with the rights to the game, which belong to Interplay at the moment but with the lack of progress on the development front.
The initial deal between the two companies specified that Interplay had to begin the so called “full scale” work on the Fallout MMO, which is also known as Project V13, until April 4, 2009. They were also required to get the funding needed to see the project being completed. Bethesda is saying that neither of the two conditions have been met, which means that there's an opening for Bethesda to sue for the rights to the MMO by opting out of “the trademark license agreement.”
Will Interplay push ahead with Project V13 even if it cannot set the MMO in the Fallout universe, which has quite a loyal following? Probably not, especially if development has just begun.
On the other hand, Bethesda might be interested in creating a Fallout MMO itself, given the success of Fallout 3. We'll just have to wait and see. The full 10-K report can be read here.