Gamasutra reports on a piece of business news with two gaming fallouts - er, implications. Bethesda Softworks has recently bought the Fallout license from Interplay Studios (and not just the rights to dev Fallout 3, but the whole enchilada) for US$ 5.75 million, according to papers filed before the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), found by Fallout fansite No Mutants Allowed.

Here's the fallout. Interplay used to own the IP and Bethesda simply licensing the IP for the Fallout 3 installment. Now as Bethesda owns the IP, not only can it securely move forward with the creation of Fallout content without backchecking with the owners (since they are the new owners), but it reaps the intellectual property's income...

... especially from Interplay, now the licensee for its old IP. The same documents also reveal a contractual obligation by Interplay to launch its Fallout massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) within six years from the Effective Date of the agreement between them and Bethesda, with full-scale development occurring within the first twenty-four months... or else Interplay forfeits its license rights. It does give a potential window to when we'll see that Fallout MMOG.

And with the money from the Bethesda enchilada purchase, they may have some seed to start the project. Hey, at least Bethesda's not doing an MMO, like they said.

We probably don't have to explain how popular the Fallout franchise was for PC gamers . And while we've already seen four Fallout titles grace our computer, we were wondering just where Interplay was going to take their much-celebrated RPG. How about going online?

We were scoping out the United States Security and Exchange Commission's main site, and one of the more interesting documents we've found was for an investment proposal by Interplay Studios. We'll remember them as the happy people who've given us fun, wholesome games like Earthworm Jim and MDK, among others.

Now the proposal's mostly sales statistics on the MMO market, expected competition, and sales projected sales figures. But what did strike our fancy were a couple of points made in the document:

• The investment offers being proposed for groups outside the U.S.  , "...prospective offer reserved to off-shore of the US, qualified investors pursuant to French Law," as it says
  
• Fallout Online's estimated to start production January next year, with the game releasing  in June, 2010.
• The estimated production cost is estimated at USD $ 75,000,000.
• They're expecting 1 million subscribers by the first year of launch.
• One of the major competitors mentioned in the list was Vivendi/Blizzard's WoW (*gasp*).
  

Those are just the basic details we thought you'd wanna hear from this proposal - it's mostly graphs, analysis and (rosy) profits estimates when the game takes off. Then again, given how much fun the previous Fallout titles offered, we're hoping it'll provide for the same level of fun we all remember through its previous incarnations.