Fallout Franchise Gone from GOG

[Taskeen]

However Bethesda had no hand in creating the original Fallout games, whatsoever. So fuck Bethesda and their "legal" department.

The original creators art should always be acknowledged.

However, what we have going on here is like the following metaphorically

Original Art:

Bethesda Owns Now (and also Apple):

 

[Per]

The original creators art should always be acknowledged.

There's been no indication that the creators will not continue to be acknowledged. Only that Interplay will not be legally named as the publisher when they're not.

 

[Geech]

from what I glimpsed since, it seems that failing Interplay was unable to make good on its end and was trying to leech on Bethesda success.

This is pretty much correct. Bethesda tried a fair amount of legal dickery, but none of it really influenced the outcome of the case. What it really boiled down to is that Interplay couldn't show the progress they were legally required to show. At one point Interplay tried to claim the license should revert to them, but this was never a remotely plausible outcome.

 

[Yamu]

The entire case was a battle of the blowhards. Sometimes, there is no good guy, and as great as it was that the trilogy went into so many eager new hands completely gratis, I can't champion Iplay just because the fans happened to profit rather than suffer by their dickery for once. I'm sure that was a secondary or tertiary concern for them in doing what they did, at best.

In other (more OP-related) news, Bethesda's official Twitter account wants us to know that they're doing everything they can to get the games back up on Steam ASAP. No mention of GoG, nor is it even acknowledged when anyone asks.

 

[NovaRain]

If they're going to remove Interplay logos & texts, they would at least need to edit the opening movies, texts in exe, and the credits, changing the MASTER.DAT file I guess.

 

[fred2]

In other (more OP-related) news, Bethesda's official Twitter account wants us to know that they're doing everything they can to get the games back up on Steam ASAP. No mention of GoG, nor is it even acknowledged when anyone asks.

Make sense, Beth never had a working relation with GOG, at least I don't recall any elder scroll titles there.. also that fallout give away stunt that GOG did couple of weeks before their license expired, business wise they pretty much pissed on beth, though beth don't need them, so it is likely guaranteed that beth will piss on them in return...

If they're going to remove Interplay logos & texts, they would at least need to edit the opening movies, texts in exe, and the credits, changing the MASTER.DAT file I guess.

I assumed that they are going to replace the installer image/legal, readme etc. I don't know what the standard practice about opening movies, I suppose they might want to replace 'Interplay' and keep 'Black Isle Studios' (not sure if it worth the trouble)

So instead of Interplay intro we will have Bethesda?

I'm with fred2, I only know bits of the whole InterplayxBethesda

Bethesda bought the full rights to the Fallout franchise from Interplay a time back. Interplay retained the rights to all previously published Fallout games, and was allowed to continue selling the Fallouts that had been released. In the fallout (pun intended) from the legal issues over Interplay not releasing Fallout Online within the timeframe established from the IP sale, Interplay was only allowed to sell previous Fallout titles until the end of 2013 where the rights would revert back to Bethesda.


In a nut-shell.

iirc when Interplay hit financial uncertainty it choose Beth to develop fallout 3(in a similar fashion to how Beth choose to develop Obsidian for FO:NV), soon after they went down and sold the whole franchise to Beth, retaining limited right to continue selling the original games until(2014 i guess) and secured a licence to develop 'Fallout Online' within the fallout universe(again like FO:NV)

As I understand the legal argument was about, Interplay unable to show any progress with Fallout Online(v13), thus loosing its license, and later on something about how they started to sell their fallout 1/2/tactics that was either leeching or pissing on Beth Fallout 3 success.. or maybe it was just a legal arm wrestling related to the first issue, where Interplay was clearly in the wrong.

 

[Dead Guy]

Did Interplay even have anything to do with GOG giving the games away for free, as some people are implying, or how does that work exactly? If so then why didn't they give them away for free on steam, or didn't they have the rights to the same games on steam? Or do the outlets buy rights to sell and then put the pricetag to whatever the hell they see fit?

 

[DustyTraveller]

Well, Bethesda did pay a nice amount for the fallout name and stuff. Sure Interplay might have wished for more but they didn't seem that discontent at the time.

Too bad they messed up with that deal for an fallout-MMO but without any right to put any fallout-stuff in the game.
That should have been clearly spelled out in the contract so your opponents (Bethesda) lawyers can't pull off stunts like that.
With a crystal clear sales contract from the beginning they could have focused on strengthening the MMO dev team instead of fighting Bethesda in court.

 

[Yamu]

Did Interplay even have anything to do with GOG giving the games away for free, as some people are implying, or how does that work exactly? If so then why didn't they give them away for free on steam, or didn't they have the rights to the same games on steam? Or do the outlets buy rights to sell and then put the pricetag to whatever the hell they see fit?

Hmm. I'd assumed the distributors had to forward a percentage of the sales so something like this would have needed Iplay's okay, but I suppose there are other contract models. It could also just be that GoG was taking advantage of some kind of rights technicality involved in the franchise handoff, too, or just ate a loss on paper. The little research I've done has proved inconclusive, but it's not like companies typically publicize the a-z logic behind their internal decisions anyway.

 

[Oppen]

I just hope Bethesda will give up the code to the games, now they control the lot...

I don't think that will happen. Beth/Zenimax is not too open source friendly, AFAIK. Didn't they forbid Carmack releasing anything related to id Tech 4 engine?
And even if I'm wrong with this, chances are they've lost the code already. I mean, it's more than 10 years old, and the fact they use sfall instead of making the proper modifications to the original source code is a bit of evidence for this idea.

I'd be glad to be proved wrong, though.

 

[diggfinger]

As it was hinted earlier last month, GOG.com have had to cease offering the original Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics games as part of their selection - a move that can be seen as sort of a milestone for GOG, who had been providing a convenient, legit source for those since the very beginning of the service. If you had obtained Fallout previously though, such as through a purchase or during their mid-December free offering, Good Old Games says you will still be able to download the installers - although you must have had already made the code registration or made the purchase before Dec 31st, as any unredeemed free offering codes are no longer valid. Gift codes obtained outside this giveaway are, on the other hand, still good to get a copy.

Here's to another tumultous year for the Fallout franchise

Source: GOG.com

Super happy I got both games digitally - and that I have them Big Box at home

 

[fred2]

Beth/Zenimax is not too open source friendly, AFAIK. Didn't they forbid Carmack releasing anything related to id Tech 4 engine?

No one is ... if you were thinking about ID tech older engines, it has nothing todo with open source friendliness and everything todo with advertising and building a user base..