Bethesda finally announced the outcome of their Interplay/Fallout legal battle in a press release today:

FALLOUT® MMO RIGHTS RESTORED TO BETHESDA SOFTWORKS® IN INTERPLAY LITIGATION

All Fallout® Intellectual Property Rights Belong Exclusively to Bethesda

January 9, 2012 (Rockville, MD) –ZeniMax® Media Inc. today announced that a settlement had been reached in the lawsuit filed by its subsidiary, Bethesda Softworks®, against Interplay Entertainment Corporation in 2009, Bethesda Softworks LLC v Interplay Entertainment Corp., seeking cancellation of the license granted to Interplay to develop a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) based on the Fallout brand. Bethesda maintained in its complaint that Interplay had failed to meet the conditions for the license and the license was therefore of no continuing validity.

Under the terms of the settlement, the license granted to Interplay to develop the Fallout MMO is null and void, and all rights granted to Interplay to develop a Fallout MMO revert back to Bethesda, effective immediately. Interplay has no ongoing right to use the Fallout brand or any Fallout intellectual property for any game development. ZeniMax will pay Interplay $2 million as consideration in the settlement, each party will bear its own costs of the litigation, and Bethesda will continue to own all Fallout intellectual property rights. Interplay will be permitted to continue to sell the original Fallout ®Tactics, Fallout® and Fallout® 2 PC games through December 2013, after which time all rights to market those games revert to and become the sole property of Bethesda. Under the original agreement pursuant to which Bethesda had acquired the Fallout property, Interplay was granted certain merchandising rights to sell those original Fallout games, but those merchandising rights will now expire on December 31, 2013.

Blah blah blah.. Interplay did bad things "allegedly"..

If you might recall, here's what I was predicting several months ago:

I think Interplay is just playing the long game. They might not have any money, but they're thinking ahead and they just need to hold out longer then Zenimax can in facing their private investors.

There's probably no real development happening, and Interplay has no serious plans to produce a Fallout MMO, so they're just waiting for Bethesda to fold and finally purchase the Fallout IP unconditionally with an outrageous price tag. This recent legal game is just demonstrating how desperate and unplanned Bethesda is in dealing with the situation. I think, in the end, Bethesda will completely own the Fallout IP but they'll pay an arm and a leg for it.

Interplay originally sold the Fallout IP for $5.75 million, and now they're selling it back to them again for an additional $2 million. (I wonder if there is anything else undisclosed in the settlement?)

Plus, Q4 ends December 31 (I guess that makes it FY2012 Q1 in the US?) and quarterly shareholders meetings will be held in late January to early February 2012.

Nailed it. :)

Even with the rights to the MMO, it's not like Bethesda is even planning on creating a MMO. They just wanted the full IP to move forwards with their single player adventures. Although, even without a MMO, multiplayer features are still very likely for future installments. There are a lot of problems creating a MMO of this genre, and it's something I'll be talking about soon.

(By the way, I'm guessing that the Diablo 3 Release Date announcement will be made before Activision Blizzard's early Feb shareholders meeting if they intend on releasing it by March. They'll want something nice to tell their shareholders, but they won't be revealing any pre-order numbers or anything. Cataclysm was announced 1 month before the shareholders meeting, but SC2 was announced just 3 days before the meeting. Cataclysm had Digital Pre-Downloads though.)

I will be giving away 2 beta-keys tomorrow at 1:00PM PST.

One for Path of Exile and the other for Tribes Ascend (Thanks Matais!).

You obviously won't have time for both (keys go fast), so make sure you pick the one that's higher priority for you. :)

For the Tribes Ascend key, I don't know how exactly to register it since I haven't done it myself. I assume that you'll need to create an account with Hi-Rez Studios, and then register the key there. So, you'll have to do some leg work and prepare for tomorrow.

I'll be doing another simple random letter shuffle for both keys. Good luck!

* UPDATE:

Tribes Ascend Key: F3F75A74511AFD4B42AE7C2B1

Apparently, these are pretty easy to get a hold of. So, if you have any spares that you want to give away, just post them as a comment here.

Path of Exile Key: FRSQJ-5G2PN-HBKGV-3____

Letter Shuffle: P M F P

If you win and get a friend invite, the people here would really appreciate it if you throw it back for another contest. :)

• This post has been upgraded from "Minor" to "Significant Updates". A Public Relations representative from Irvine HQ has confirmed that the Korean Times article is correct. As you recall, I was waiting for a retraction, but instead there has been a confirmation. :)
  
  What was contained in the factual news (non-blog) source? Blizzard has a simultaneous global launch planned, it will be region-free for the first time in the company's history, each country will have identical software, and the Korean Board's decision has kept the game launching in other countries.
  
  Blizzard PR has also provided a quote that there are global launch plans, even though it was never officially announced. This is all some very credible evidence, and I can now call them "facts" which I wasn't able to do before. All of this confirms what I've been writing about to be accurate. :)
  

  Asked whether the situation might cause Blizzard to launch the game in other markets first, instead of a worldwide simultaneous release, Damron stated that “this will not impact our global launch plans.” Given this, a delay in the South Korean Market could impact the release in North America and Europe as well.

  Although the initial delay was caused by the SK issues, this means that Blizzard right now has plans to launch and the SK issues are no longer holding it back. Because they're having a worldwide simultaneous launch and you can't launch without all countries being in line, this means that Blizzard is plowing forwards with an expected approval. Meaning that Diablo 3 will be approved for use in SK either because Blizzard knows things are positive and it will be approved with the RMAH, or they're planning on stripping out the RMAH entirely. If this is the case, then they have a launch date planned already and it also might explain the confidence surrounding the new "Q1" statement instead of old "Early 2012" regurgitation. Atleast now you know why Bashiok had to be so ambiguous about his posts. :)

• Details about the Bethesda v. Interplay settlement have not been announced yet, but it appears that Bethesda has dismissed their lawsuit against Interplay. And by dismissing with prejudice, it might mean that Bethesda has made Interplay immune from being sued for the same reasons in the future. Can't wait to find out what really happened here. :)

• I've updated the "Diablo Delay Debate" post with additional information. I also moved that awesome "I'm a problem" Bashiok quote to my "Important Notices" page.

• The Korea GRB never made a final decision today. They meet every Wednesday and Friday and these constant delays in making a decision may force Blizzard's hand. Typically, release date announcements are made on Mondays (and right before their shareholders meeting, unless there's something unusual about the circumstances.) There won't be an announcement made next Monday, though, because Bashiok said that they still need to announce their new game changes "before or with the next beta patch."

• Bashiok confirmed that Blizzard is planning for a Q1 2012 release. So "Early" means Jan, Feb, or Mar.

• It also looks like Diablo 3 will indeed have Pre-Digital Downloads available. I wonder when (or if) the region-free announcement will be made and how this will work. For example, if you download the Digital Copy, they'll probably lock the game to the region's Battle.net that you downloaded it from. That way, you can't just download the game for a much cheaper price, but then register the game in your own country. Does that really matter though? If I setup a US Battle.net account, pay for and download the game, I still have the option of playing on faster AU servers and I can register my home region for the RMAH as AU. Will they have some security measure or process in place to prevent this though? (e.g. the B.Net account you register on automatically becomes your "home region" for RMAH.)

• I'm still working on another post about Titan, but I just haven't had a lot of time to work on it. It's getting pretty big too, so I might need to break it down into parts (surprised?). Really nothing much else going on, so don't be surprised if things are a little quiet around here. Until, that is, new or interesting information comes out.