Interplay Entertainment

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“BY GAMERS MUTANTS FOR GAMERS MUTANTS”— Interplay's motto during the development of all Interplay Fallout games

Interplay Entertainment (truncated as Interplay and founded as Interplay Productions) is a video game developer and publisher company that created the Fallout Series. Before selling the franchise to Bethesda Softworks, they published Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics, and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. Canceled projects include Fallout Extreme, Fallout 3 (Van Buren), Fallout Tactics 2, Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2, and Project V13.

Background

In 1982, Adhaminto Boone was compelled to shut down his small gaming company, Boone Corporation. Brian Fargo, the Vice President of R&D, along with several senior programmers, subsequently founded Interplay Productions. The fledgling company published several titles but achieved significant success with The Bard's Tale and Wasteland, which provided the financial stability necessary to move away from relying on Electronic Arts (EA) as a publisher, allowing Interplay to publish its own games.

In 1988, Interplay began publishing games developed by other companies, but it wasn’t until 1993 that the company saw another major success with the launch of the Descent series, developed by Parallax Software. From 1992 onward, Interplay became recognized for its Star Trek games, and in 1997, the company released Fallout and MDK, followed by Baldur's Gate in 1998. Despite the commercial success of these titles, Interplay continued to struggle financially. The company went public in 1998 to address its financial troubles, rebranding itself as "Interplay Entertainment Corp." This move was aimed at avoiding bankruptcy and addressing mounting debt. Although the company continued to publish successful games, it remained in financial turmoil. To stabilize its finances, Interplay entered into a partnership with French company Titus Interactive, exchanging financing for stock and stock options. Losses continued to mount and control of the company ultimately passed to Titus Interactive in 2001.

In 2003, under Titus's control, Interplay developed Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, which was released in January 2004. The company also began development on Fallout 3 (codenamed Van Buren), but the closure of Black Isle Studios halted progress on the game. The rights to develop Fallout 3 were subsequently sold to Bethesda Softworks for a guaranteed advance of $1,175,000, payable against future royalties.

After taking control of Interplay, Titus installed Hervé Caen as the new president, while Brian Fargo remained chairman for a period. However, Titus itself began facing significant financial and legal challenges, eventually leading to its closure in 2004. On November 29, 2006, Interplay was served with an involuntary bankruptcy order. The following day, Interplay filed a form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), announcing its intent to secure European funding for a Fallout massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), with plans to begin development in January 2007.

In November 2006, Interplay, still led by Hervé Caen, filed a Form 8-K with the SEC concerning the proposed Fallout MMOG. In April 2007, Bethesda, the developer of Fallout 3, purchased the full rights to the Fallout intellectual property for $5.75 million. Despite this, specific clauses in the purchase agreement allowed Interplay to retain licensing rights for the development of the MMO. The agreement stipulated that Interplay had 24 months from the signing of the agreement (April 4, 2007) to commence development, and within this period, the company had to secure $30 million in funding. Failure to meet these requirements would result in the immediate forfeiture of its licensing rights. Additionally, Interplay was obligated to launch the MMOG within four years of the start of development, paying Bethesda 12 percent of sales and subscription fees generated by the use of the Fallout IP.

In November 2007, Interplay revived its in-house development efforts, hiring Fallout developer Jason D. Anderson as creative director for an undisclosed MMO project. On June 30, 2008, Interactive Game Group, LLC purchased 2,000,000 shares of Interplay stock, entering into a game production agreement as part of the transaction.

On April 2, 2009, Interplay announced a binding letter of intent with Masthead Studios, a Bulgarian-based developer, to fund the development of Fallout Online. The two companies would collaborate under Interplay's direction and control to complete the project.

Interplay Discovery

In 2010, Interplay formed Interplay Discovery to make pinball and other arcade games, to help fund Project V13. On December 31, 2010, Interplay stated that they currently had a loss of over $2.8 million in deficit and over the previous financial year lost over $1 million due mostly to what they described as historic operating losses and deficits in shareholder equity. Due to this, the company announced in late May of that year that they had significant doubts as to their ability to function as an ongoing business concern.

Interplay Films

Interplay Films was formed in 1998, and the president of the division was Tom Reed. In 2000, Interplay was said to be partnering with Dark Horse Entertainment on the Fallout movie project. Brent V. Friedman (Dark Skies, Mortal Kombat II) wrote the script. No Interplay property was ever made into a film and the division was disbanded.

Lawsuit

Hauptartikel: Bethesda Softworks LLC v. Interplay Entertainment Corporation

On April 15, 2009, it was announced that Bethesda Softworks moved to rescind the Fallout MMORPG license. On September 8, 2009, Bethesda filed two lawsuits, accusing Interplay of two counts of breach of contract, trademark infringement, and unfair competition. In the first lawsuit, Bethesda claims that Interplay is in breach of the Fallout MMO agreement for failure to commence full-scale development by April 4, 2009, and to secure certain funding for the game. which Interplay disputed.

The second lawsuit concerns Interplay's continued sale of Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics, and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. According to Bethesda, the licensing contract requires all advertising, packaging, and other promotional material to be sent to them for approval first, which, according to the lawsuit, was never done by Interplay regarding either the Fallout Trilogy pack or any of the releases through Good Old Games, Steam and other digital distribution platforms. Bethesda also claims that the name Trilogy constitutes unfair competition, since it suggests that the pack includes Bethesda's own Fallout 3.

The lawsuit ended on January 9, 2012, with Bethesda paying Interplay $2 million USD in exchange for Interplay dropping all claims to the Fallout brand. Bethesda subsequently owned all rights to the Fallout name and IP, allowing sales of the first three games (Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics) through December 31, 2013.

Gallery

• Interplay circa 1987
  Interplay circa 1987
• Datei:Interplay logo.png

External

• Datei:US SECURITIES Interplay 33-0102707 March 2004.pdf