r/todayilearned • u/CrashRiot • 20h ago
TIL that Bethesda bought the Fallout IP for just 5.75 million dollars.
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/-i-fallout-i-ip-sold-to-bethesda279
u/---TheFierceDeity--- 20h ago
I mean at the time they did it was a niche isometric rpg series with two main titles, a third badly received spin off and a cancelled third game.
That price is honestly generous for what the IP was at that point
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u/Raket0st 18h ago
At that time they also didn't get the rights to Fallout multiplayer games, which Interplay retained in order to make a Fallout mmo. Had Interplay launched that game, they would have held onto the rights to make Fallout multiplayer games.
The price Bethesda paid for Fallout shows both the potential they saw in the ip and a large amount of fandom. They overpaid to get an ip they loved.
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u/Sniper_Brosef 11h ago
They absolutely did not overpay, even without hindsight. Fallout had a cult following and bethesda games already had a broad appeal. When fallout 3 launched it sold 4.7 million copies in it's first week.
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u/bl123123bl 10h ago
That’s because it was riding off of oblivions success as “oblivion with guns”
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u/mata_dan 6h ago edited 2h ago
Yes, everyone I knew playing it around the time of launch had never even heard of fallout before. In fact same with Oblivion, most had never even heard of Elder Scrolls they just saw some marketing hype of graphics (edit: I had only played Morrowind out of chance, loved it).
And of course, the games were designed specifically for those new players.24
u/DVXC 17h ago
It's a shame the IP wasn't fully recognised for its potential before the sale, but it would also be dishonest to ignore how important for its revitalisation "Oblivion with Guns" was.
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u/letmepostjune22 9h ago
It was/is a brilliant game. The revisionism that's it's poor not only isn't fair, many of the criticisms are objectively false. It kept the atmosphere from the original 2 brilliantly, is jam packed with unmarked quests. They just whiffed the ending but corrected it later.
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u/wedgebert 3h ago
It kept the atmosphere from the original 2 brilliantly
As someone who grew up playing the first two (and some Tactics) and played them repeatedly, this is just wrong. Terrible main story aside, Fallout 3 isn't a bad game, but it's not a Fallout game. It's Fallout fan fiction
Fallout 3 just doesn't feel like Fallout 1 or 2 because Bethesda didn't understand Fallout 1 or 2 at anything beyond a surface level. From changing the tone from "dark post apocalyptic world with some dark humor" to "wacky over-the-top dark comedy" to thinking it was a world obsessed (and stuck) in the 1950s culturally.
They went from "nuclear bombs are rare and so powerful even the bad guys are hesitant to use them to "look at the crazy people who built a whole town around a bomb, do you want to blow them up for the lulz?"
And even in Fallout 1, civilization was recovering because it had been 84 years since the war. Fallout 2 had even more recovery. But Fallout 3 is 181 years after the war and people still live in rickety shacks with skeletons and trash everywhere.
As someone once said about, Fallout 1 and 2 are post-post apocalyptic games. The post-apocalypse is over and civilization is returning (look at Shady Sands change between 1 & 2 or Vault City in 2)
Fallout 3 (and its sequels) are post-apocalyptic theme parks about as close to the atmosphere and themes of the originals as Frontierland is to the real Wild West
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u/neomaxizundweeby 5h ago
I cry inside every time someone forgets about Tactics.
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u/604Ataraxia 5h ago
It was awesome. I'm going to install it and play it again today. It's my favorite non canon portrayal of bos.
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u/farbekrieg 19h ago
at the time fallout and interplay was "mostly" dead, it isnt the same IP but we get fo3 nv 4 76 and at least 2 seasons of a tv show, and if you cant stand bethesda fo1 2 tactics and BOS still exist (tho BOS is kinda difficult to play)
People are allowed to have their opinions as to which is best but the "gamersphere" is better with fallout being an active IP.
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u/BooCreepyFootDr 12h ago
Every time I would near completion of Fallout: Tactics, BoS, the fucking thing would crash. I never did finish it.
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u/Classicgoose 12h ago
Yeah, I really enjoyed it but quite buggy. I remember getting a vehicle stuck in one of the bos bunkers
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u/Fluffy_Kitten13 13h ago
I mean, I could've done without F76 and F4 tbh.
Those games sucked.
Hope the next Fallout is going more F3/FNV.
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u/-Tayne- 20h ago
Huh, I wonder what happened to that fallout mmo the article mentions.
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u/CrashRiot 20h ago
There’s a wiki about it. Basically, it led to a legal dispute with Bethesda which then ultimately led to its cancellation.
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u/DivineBloodline 20h ago
I don’t believe they were all the far into development, but it just got scraped after the sale. Fallout Online Wiki
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u/hinckley 20h ago
Long story short, Interplay dragged their feet on it and Bethesda performed as much fuckery as they could to slow it down further, knowing if Interplay didn't meet contractual targets then the MMO rights would fall to them as well. Lawsuits ensued. Bethesda made Fallout 76. It sucked.
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u/CrashRiot 20h ago
It’s made a ton of progress since launch imo. I didn’t really find it playable when first released but it’s really fun now to put in a couple hours per week.
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u/gameonlockking 20h ago
Were you born in a barn? Fallout 76 is great now.
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u/CarefulAstronomer255 17h ago
Were you born in a barn?
That's not the right context for this phrase. I think you're looking for "do you live under a rock?".
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u/mata_dan 6h ago
Not really just, that's about the actual value these things actually have. When something has a crazy crazy high price it was because it is gold dust (or investors/buyers are being hoodwinked).
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20h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Giorggio360 17h ago
You can literally just ignore it. Fallout 1, 2, Tactics, and BOS still exist. If you don’t like the others, you simply don’t have to play them.
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u/anal-inspector 14h ago
I dont.
I played fo4. I enjoyed it. I liked exploring and buolsign shelters. I absolutely didnt like the shit story and dialogue. Terrible. Interplay wouod have made luch metter stuff.
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u/Giorggio360 14h ago
Interplay wouldn’t, because the company went completely kaput almost two decades ago now.
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u/anal-inspector 13h ago
Two decades! What teh fuxzor r u talking about. I AINT THAT OLD. IT WAS JUST YESTERYEAR. Muh chuldhood, muh enjoyable lifeeee
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u/SatisfactionPure7895 15h ago
There is always one like you.
If you want to play f2 over and over and over - go for it.
The rest of us have 4 more awesome worlds to explore.
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u/anal-inspector 14h ago
Tears on my face.
Fo4 had a great environment but absolutely shit story and writing. A total tragedy. Shameful.
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u/Nuclear_Farts 19h ago
lol no one cared about fallout until Bethesda made it good. then shouldn't have titled Fallout 3 as 3 and just started over at 1
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u/rip_cpu 19h ago
That's like saying no one cared about Baldur's Gate until Larian made BG3.
Fallout was a beloved classic. Everything that was great about Fallout 3 was stuff based off the original. The themes, the world building, the setting, all of those predated Bethesda. Bethesda just slapped it onto the same 3d engine they and open world formula they used for every single one of their games.
I'll give them credit for picking good soundtrack though.
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u/Raket0st 18h ago
Fallout 1,2 and tactics were niche titles. BoS was a terrible attempt to muscle Fallout into arpgs. For better and worse it is Bethesda that turned Fallout into the huge ip it is today. Even back in 2008 Fallout 3 pretty much pushed more copies on release week than Fo1&2 had sold total.
That's because a lot of players wanted Oblivion-with-guns, not because of how beloved Fallout was. Bethesda were the premier makers of open world rpgs. Is that unfair to us og fans? Maybe, but Fallout would be dead if Bethesda hadn't put its pedigree and mainstream appeal behind the brand.
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u/duncandun 17h ago
I mean of course FO3 sold more. Gaming market general had exploded with 20x as many consumers than when fallout came out in 1998.
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u/Raket0st 17h ago
Yeah, but that's kind of beside the point. Fallout was a niche ip that hadn't produced a mainline game in over 5 years when Bethesda got the rights to it (not a long time now, an eternity back then). It was dead in the water under Interplay.
Bethesda are the people who brought Fallout mainstream. It built on Black Isles great foundation, but that foundation of lore, aestethic and tone was married to Bethesda's incredibly popular gameplay. Saying that Bethesda ruined Fallout is hyperbolic in the extreme, because it was essentially a dead ip before they bought it. Without Bethesda Fallout wouldn't be the mainstream ip it is now.
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u/Giorggio360 17h ago
Fallout 1 and 2 aren’t classics in the way you’d usually term a classic from the 90s. It’s probably more like a cult classic, especially before the Bethesda take over - it had a dedicated but relatively small fanbase.
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u/Errribbb 20h ago
Great deal for them tbh