According to a 10-K financial report filed earlier today, it appears that Interplay - who were supposed to have been developing a Fallout MMO - might instead lose the Fallout rights for the game.

The looming action (which has not yet been made official, but is still likely enough to warrant Interplay filing about it) stems not from the game's rights - which Interplay picked up fair and square - but from the game's progress. Or lack thereof.

Fallout IP owners Bethesda allege that, as part of the deal in which they bought the rights to Fallout (but left the MMO rights for Interplay), Interplay were supposed to have commenced "full-scale" work on the title by April 4, 2009.

Interplay were also supposed to have secured funding for the development of the game. Bethesda claim that neither of these conditions have been met.

As a result, Bethesda are seriously considering "[terminating] the trademark license agreement" currently in place between the two companies.

If Bethesda choose to go ahead with all this, and win, Interplay would lose their rights to produce a Fallout MMO, which may explain why an Interplay MMO is sticking with a "Project V13" code name instead of officially coming out with Fallout MMO branding.

For what it's worth, Interplay "adamantly disputes these claims". We've contacted Bethesda for comment, and will update when/if we hear back from them.

Thanks Kotaku!

Comments welcomed!

Edit:  While changing the name could be seen as a quick fix, I believe that losing the `Fallout` brand would not be such a great idea.

you should include your thoughts with the articles you post.

What do my thoughts have to do with the news I am reporting exactly?  Simply sharing the news with the community and getting opinions of members I respect and learning from this is reward enough for myself. 

I do not feel the need to spin...

I guess that this is best answered by the freedom which we are given on VGChartz.

Not adding anything to an article or link post violates forum rule #5 (Substance).

I would like to thank you both for bringing this to my attention.  I would like to extend my apologies to the VGChartz community and I will not make the same mistake again.

Frankly, a user's opinion isn't nearly as interesting as some of the power users on this site seem to think.

The article is news worthy, and comment worthy. I'm glad the OP brought it to my attention with his post. What he does or doesn't say about it is secondary.

I disagree. By writing "awesome" or "gee, that's too bad" after posting a relevant news story, I truly feel that the forum as a whole is highly enriched.

interplay made better fallout games

1 and espescially 2 were the edgiest games i ever played

it isnt about how interesting/uninteresting their opinion is.   this is a forum for discussing things.  a user that posts articles should generally try and start the discussion with their own thoughts.  im not going to be a nazi and say he should do that for every single article, as even i wont include my thoughts for every article i post in my opening post, but most of the time people should try and do it.  its not very hard to include what you think below the article.