Bethesda Wins Rights To Fallout MMO

Last week we reported that there had been a settlement in the lawsuit between Bethesda, the current holders of the rights to Fallout, and Interplay, the creators of the series who had recently been developing a MMO version of Fallout.  The details of the settlement have been made public and Bethesda now has full rights to the the Fallout Intellectual Property and to develop their own Fallout MMO.

Interplay had allegedly begun development on the Fallout MMO with Masthead Studios but a second lawsuit by Bethesda resulted in Masthead no longer having any rights to the franchise either, leaving Bethesda in full control of all future Fallout games, and aborting any Fallout MMO that was in the works.


Robert Altman, CEO of Bethesda's parent company ZeniMax said "While we strongly believe in the merits of our suits, we are pleased to avoid the distraction and expense of litigation while completely resolving all claims to the Fallout IP. Fallout is an important property of ZeniMax and we are now able to develop future Fallout titles for our fans without third party involvement or the overhang of others' legal claims."

The settlement does allow Interplay to continue to sell the original Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout tactics, but only until the end of 2013 at which point they will belong to Bethesda. 

Bethesda hasn't officially confirmed anything regarding the next Fallout product, but we can expect them to put this valuable franchise to good use in the future.