Project Van Buren featured in PC Gamer

This mainstream attention might be a double edge sword. What if this gets popular enough for Bethesda to take notice and cease and desist Project Van buran down? Other big projects like OpenMW was almost taken down and a fallout mod for Fonline was ceased and desist by Beth before.

 

Wait they tried to take down openmw? That's a shitty move. Thought they almost never interfere with mods. (Well, technically it's a source port, but still.)

 

Yep, Bethesda almost took down openmw because they made a port for android. The OpenMW had to make an agreement with Beth to not continue and promote the mobile port.

 

Which I still find funny as fuck, because there were lots of those projects before and after and none of them ever got any cease and desist from Bethsoft.

 

Wasn't Black Isle's own policy about mods, that they must not know about them?

IE. Officially 'no', but unofficially 'yes'—so long as they plausibly didn't know about it. That was my impression.

Once it's getting significant press, I'd expect that they have to defend their IP.

 

Here's how I see it. IP holders usually interfere with cases of fair use when there is a direct threat to their own commercial activity, ongoing or planned. For instance, Take Two has taken down project Re3 few months before they released their own remaster simply because it could very well impact its sales - some people could download this project instead and have a decent technical remaster (new engine, better compatibility) for free, shifting their interest from Rockstar's own remaster. I think that every single C&D take down happens for this reason, whether the public is aware of the true reason behind or not.

OpenMW is another possible example - Bethesda forced them to stop the distribution of Android version. I'm not sure when the take down happened exactly, but I think this could happen because of their plans for or actual release of (depending on when it happened) TES: Blades mobile game. I see no other reason why would they demand only the android builds excluded and leave the rest be.

There's a lot of different projects that haven't been taken down, which leads me to the conclusion that this is predominantly tied with whether or not is the project impacting IP holder's activities.

Now, I have no idea whether this might be my case or not. What I chose to believe based on my observations is that Bethesda is not very interested in anything regarding the classic Fallout games. Maybe it's out of respect to the fact that they are not truly their products, maybe it's just because there's not many of us dinosaurs playing these old games to be considered as a significant market they'd really need. Whatever the reason, there's far too many projects and mods based on the classic games that have been around for years, more than a decade even in some cases, very popular among the older fans that must have appeared on Beth's radar and yet haven't been taken down.

We'll see what the future has prepared for us.

 

If it is because it is intefering with something Bethesda is doing then I can't see this project being taken down cause... Well I don't think Bethesda gives a rats ass about the design documents for Van Buren. They seem to want to stay away from any west coast stuff and keep themselves to the east.

 

I'm not 100% sure that's true because it is known that Bethesda initially planned on placing their Fallout 3 on the west coast too (Todd Howard mentioned that in the Making of documentary iirc). Obsidian was also asked to remove a reference about San Francisco being nuked from New Vegas (that could, however, be connected to Kellog's backstory in Fallout 4). Anyhow, I believe they do have something in store for the west coast. Doesn't mean it's being actively worked on, doesn't even mean it's ever going to be used, studios simply store ideas and make ways for them like this just in case.

I do agree though that Van Buren is hardly of any interest for them, nor is it a threat to their plans and activities in my opinion.

 

They could as well just have not added that stupid Frisco reference in Fo4. Did it add anything to the game at all except make it even more unbelievable? Really tensed to see how badly written their next game will be.

 

Yes, but the impact of these total conversion games is fairly limited, in spite of the fact that they maintain a very good quality. I think the audience Fallout has now consists predominantly of the fans that started with this franchise after Bethesda took over, with great portion of them starting only after Fallout 4. I don't know the numbers and I might be wrong, but that's my impression of the fanbase these days. I think very small portion of today's audience played the classic titles, and even smaller would be interested in playing fan made titles based on the classics, no matter how good they are content-wise. I'm talking about those people who favor modern gameplay and/or graphics and simply refuse to play the classic titles because they're old, slow, hard and "ugly" (which is a legitimate stance, I mean 20+ yo games are not for everyone, that's fine).

These total conversion titles are made for those who can appreciate them, and I think the number of those people is very small compared to the whole fanbase to bother Bethesda.

 

I'd also note that the difference with FOnline is that FOnline does in part recreate the original games directly. Small market though it is, Bethesda does still sell these games.

 

What is that about FOnline being taken down by Bethesda anyway? Asking out of curiosity because I've never heard of it. Cvet still actively develops FOnline engine and as far as I know there's a bunch of old distributions still running out there.

 

It wasn't FOnline that was taken down, but a game made with the engine. Still, there were other such projects all the time and none of them ever heard a piep from Bethsoft.

 

What Remains got C&D just plain out of nowhere

As far as I know, it was pretty low-profile, but I wasn't registered at the time, so perhaps someone else could shed some more light on it?

 

But then there are other TC projects that haven't been touched.

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliver...ks-if-you-snooze-do-you-lose/?sh=2c40cbd46c22

https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/trademark-need-defended-9813.html

 

Very good reading, thank you.