Brother None said:
That seems a bit jumping the gun, since they haven't won the entire case. It's like arguing all those costs were incurred solely in defending against a preliminary injunction case, rather than the case as a whole. That seems unlikely.
This is the filing for return of recoverable money spent deposing Bethesda COO James Leder which is 9538.38 out of about 100k estimated legal fees for trial proceedings.
The cost of deposing Bethesda COO James Leder was:
3901.32 ( LA To Maryland Transportation costs for Interplay CEO and In house attorney Nelson + Representative Attorney Gersh)
3526 (The Interplay Attorney deposition legal fees of James Leder )
1686.4 ( Online legal research)
225.76 (overnight mail to court and opposing counsel)
2.4 (Postage)
197.5 (Photocopy charges)
Interplay is arguing for the return of their money spent defending themselves against the Bethesda requested injunction which the judge denied and Interplay won, hence they are seeking return of costs incurred since Bethesda initiated this action and lost it in a court of law.
There is nothing out of the ordinary in the Filing.
I take you to court on a particular motion. You win. You ask for money spent defending yourself on this motion.
Pretty simple.
Proceeding to a court case and recovering money from winning the whole case is another matter.
This legal log jam could have them in court for years if they throw enough dirt at each other.
There is always an amicable solution that can be reached for both parties which allows for the release of a multi player Fallout earlier than would a court case delay cause.
It is in the best interest of both parties to strike a deal and release the Fallout MMO while the Fallout 3 Iron is still hot.
Too many fallout sequels and a certain amount of fans will get Fallout fatigue and then again other post Apocalypse games might come out that could dilute the MMO field spending dollar.
But I'm not sure either of these fearless company leaders have more than tunnel vision.
If they did, they would not be fighting like this.
If I were Bethesda and had a functional business brain other than putting lipstick on the pig and releasing the paint job as the next game/sequel
I would have taken advantage of IPLY's low price to stealthily build a minority stake(which does not need to be reported to the SEC until the 5% ownership threshold is reached) which then can proceed to a majority position later on based on new share issue and I can monetize this by having Interplay turn into a subsidiary of Bethesda.
And then Interplay proceeds to announce Fallout MMO to the gaming media and the buzz will turn Interplay back into a 100+ million $ market cap company overnight based on expected MMO cashflow alone( let alone the rest of their gaming IP like descent, Freespace, MDK, Earthworm Jim.....)
Bethesda can then sell some of their Interplay stake for 15-30X return which they can use to pay off their loan taken for buying out Carmack's company.
But these guys are not too bright. They'd rather get held hostage by Wall Street Bond Holders than use the Wall Street method to their advantage.
Any miss steps in execution and they could violate their debt covenants which would allow for a Bond shark to come in a buy the distressed bonds at a discount and take over Bethesda and any of their IP.
hmmmm ( Ponders what to do with the lipstick products of Bethesda.....)
Here's a tangible example of the idea:
earlier this year, a company called Diedrich Coffee (DDRX) that nobody wanted to buy at less than 1 million dollars ends up getting bid for right and left and bought out for more than 130 million all because certain would be buyers had no insight and no foresight to buy it 6 months earlier for peanuts.
Why all this finance talk on a gaming site you say?
Well, beside the obvious reasons, there is something overarching;
Capitalism destroyed gaming as we know it and turned most of gaming into a cookie cutter like profit at all cost business.
There is a way to do a reversal using capitalist means. And that is where the hope is for those with an inclination to join in the fray of the virtual reality world known as "The World of Planet Earth".
Otherwise, "Fallout 13: dwell here" will hit the virtual shelves of your download queue provided that the thin air backed monetary unit known as the dollar hasn't totally collapsed and the 30 million plus slave labor byproduct nation known as the rising Eastern Financial Empire of China then takes over which in that case you can announce the 13th iteration of the game via:
尘13：详谈
晚安，好运
Better start learning some Chinese just in case you'd rather be safe than sorry.
