Fallout: New Vegas Developers Sued Over Jokes and Copyrights
Obsidian Entertainment didn't think that using certain things required prior rights clearance.
Recently, Fallout: New Vegas writer Chris Avellone gave an interview to the author of the YouTube channel TKs-Mantis. During the conversation, he shared memories of the developers' legal problems.
FNV introduced the "Wild Wasteland" feature, which changes existing random and special encounters and locations — the game world features parody references, including to films. For example, there's a refrigerator directly referencing "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."
According to Avellone, the developers got into a lot of trouble because of some of these things:
We got into trouble because of some of these [references] because it wasn't agreed upon exactly which jokes were being added. For example, the "Godzilla gecko" — Bethesda didn't even know it was there. When they found out, they said, "Oh, great, now we're going to get hit for this."
Avellone noted that by that time, the developers were already "getting hit" because they had not cleared the rights to a trademark used in the game:
We were already getting hit for the Rorschach test because we hadn't cleared the trademark. So the lawyers came to Bethesda and said, "Looks like we're in for a fun lawsuit. So pay up." And you could hear everyone at Bethesda groan, "Oh my god, it seems they didn't even think to check the trademark." We really didn't think about that.
In the same interview, Avellone said that Bethesda arranged a review of all errors in the main game and DLC for the Fallout: New Vegas developers — for this, a special PowerPoint presentation was prepared.
Read more on the topic:
- Bethesda reprimanded Chris Avellone for his promise of a stable 30 FPS in Fallout: New Vegas
- Chris Avellone doubts that Bethesda is capable of creating a Fallout: New Vegas remaster
- The development of Fallout: New Vegas 2 was discussed - Chris Avellone named a potential setting for a new game in the franchise
- Bethesda made the Fallout: New Vegas developers watch an entire presentation breaking down the problems with their game
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