Back in April I happily announced that the Interplay Vs Bethesda lawsuit was over, after an investor reported to Joystiq that Bethesda had dropped their suit. Of course, as we discovered in our long and incredibly painful interrogation of investor Frymuchan, Bethesda confirmed that they were not dropping the suit, and planned to continue full steam ahead.
Last month, Bethesda made a claim so ridiculously absurd that I did not report on it out of strong suspicious that the report was fake. As we know so far, Interplay has the rights to create a Fallout MMO, which is what spawned the whole lawsuit in the first place (Bethesda wants those rights back). In their latest claim, Bethesda made the statement that they only gave the rights to the name Fallout for the MMO, and that Interplay had no rights to use anything else from the franchise in said MMO. So…Interplay agreed to making a Fallout MMO that has nothing whatsoever to do with Fallout aside from the name? Bethesda may have had a stronger case just having their lawyer shout out “if the glove don’t fit, you must acquit,” during trial.
Interplay, of course, fired back yesterday calling the claim “absurd” and “without merit,” surely far more conscious words than many of us would use to describe such statements (I’ll start with juvenile, desperate, pathetic, and you can fill in the rest). For a company that is worried about the Fallout MMO never making it to light, Bethesda sure is spending a lot of time and effort to cripple Interplay through legal fees and wasted time.
Then again, when the genre is continuing to take more serious turns, we can always use two clowns in the corner honking their horns and throwing pies in each other’s faces. For comedic purposes. It’s a good thing Interplay talked about the Fallout MMO being light hearted and humorous, because the game itself is already a running joke, not unlike Duke Nukem Forever. Not the happy funny either, but the depressing funny, like laughing at the crazy homeless guy with the tinfoil hat and the “The end is nigh” cardboard poster.
(Source: Gamasutra, linked above)
MMO Fallout 