Okay, a quick bit of back story here. Back in 1997, Interplay published Black Isle’s original Fallout. Everybody loves Vault Boy and the game’s an instant cult classic, with another instant cult classic sequel following on a year or so later. Then Interplay falls over and dies sometime during development of a third title (codenamed Van Buren at the time), and the Fallout franchise is left to rot in the wastelands of development hell for a few years.<\/p>\n
Several years on, and Bethesda Softworks’ parent company, Zenimax Media, picks up the licence, making some kind of agreement with whatever bits of Interplay remained over a Fallout MMO (Project V-13) that was sort of, sort of not in development. Then, in April last year, Bethesda filed suit against Interplay with an injunction against further development on the MMO, alleging that whatever stipulated conditions the agreement had been made under were not met. The injunction was denied, and Bethesda promptly appealed.<\/p>\n
Well, now Bethesda’s dropped the appeal. More importantly, this could mean the Fallout MMO is going back into development. Of course, whether or not this is actually a good thing is debatable – why does every great, original IP have to get dragged into an MMO now? Not to mention that another Fallout title – New Vegas – is also in development, and scheduled for release later this year.<\/p>\n