Bethesda Working On “Secret MMO”

20 Jan 2010 at 12:46:20 by Andy Alderson

The ongoing court case between Bethesda and Interplay has apparently revealed that Bethesda is working on a “secret MMO” in the vein of World of Warcraft.

The fact that Bethesda is working on an MMO is no big secret, with parent company Zenimax forming an online studio dedicated to working on a “massive AAA quality MMOG title that we think will challenge the current market leaders.”

However, according to Duck and Cover, the court transcripts for the proceedings revealed that the company has spent “tens of tens of millions of dollars" and has "close to a hundred people" working on the project. Intriguingly, DAC claims Bethesda has since applied for the comments about the project to be redacted from the transcripts.

Why, you may ask? Well DAC claims it’s so its competitors won’t know whether the game will be a Fallout MMO, something which would not be permitted under the current terms of its agreement with Interplay. Bethesda purchased the rights to Fallout in April 2007 and part of the deal specified that Interplay would retain the rights to release a Fallout MMO,  but only if it could secure $30m USD of funding and started full scale development within 24 months of the purchase date. Bethesda’s suit against Interplay claims it failed to meet these criteria. Rumoured screens of the Interplay Fallout MMO appeared on the net in November last year, check them out here.

We contacted Bethesda which declined to comment on the issue.

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