Interplay says Bethesda knew Fallout MMO would, in fact, be a Fallout game
Just a couple of days after watching our nation's highest legal officers debate the impact of video games across this great country, it's time for us to return to a much sillier gaming lawsuit. Gamasutra obtained a June 23 court filing issued by Interplay regarding the developer's legally troubled Fallout MMO. The filing comes as a response to a preliminary injunction filed by Bethesda which attempted to prevent Interplay from using the franchise's story, setting and characters in their online opus.
Interplay's counter-filing explains, "For at least four years, Bethesda has known that Interplay interpreted its right to create the Fallout-branded MMOG to include copyrighted content from the Fallout universe in order to make the MMOG a recognizable Fallout game." We don't know, guys -- that seems a little unreasonable. When we heard Interplay was working on a Fallout MMO, we just assumed it would be a massively multiplayer online puzzle-platformer set in a colorful, kid-friendly version of ancient Rome.
