What happened was that Interplay, through certain clauses in their contracts, retained the rights to sell the first three games after selling Fallout to Bethesda. Those rights expired last night, and thus they can no longer sell the first three Fallout games. GOG, in order to avoid a potential lawsuit from Bethesda who now has sole rights to sell the games, took the games down.

I can remember the time when their contract with Studio Canal expired. That was a HUGE blow to their catalog. They lost like 30+ titles I think, including Criterion's very first DVD release (or at least Criterion spine #1) Grand Illusion. Also, Ran, Pierrot le fou, Contempt, Last Year at Marienbad, Playtime, The Third Man, a ton of other French movies, etc. Studio Canal did re-release some of those movies in Blu-Ray format (some even region-free), but for most part these movies are just being sat on. T_T A shame, but at least the movies I care about are available to get (some I'd have to import but once again they're region-free).

Back on topic, I bid you adieu Fallout! Also...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=jG_P086L5LU#t=168

This scene is more interesting if you think of it like so:

Overseer = Betamax
Vault Dweller = GOG

At least I think it is. ;)

Hopefully there's some actual contractual negotiation going on here.

War. War between Bethesda and Interplay never changes.

Lesson learnt: If you see a game you like, don't wait till it's too late!

The Fallout IP was sold to Bethesda but part of the terms was that Interplay reserved the rights to make a Fallout MMO and the retention of the sale rights to the first three games.

as soon as the deal was inked Bethesda started dicking with Interplay's ability to raise funding for said MMO by exploiting loopholes in the contract that cost Interplay money and overstepping the terms of the sale by issuing C&D's to digital distribution platforms that Interplay was selling the first three games on (because digital download didn't exist at the time of the contract, so it wasn't explicitly covered). At the same time Interplay broke part of their end of the contract by sub-licensing development of the Fallout MMO to Masthead and fudging some numbers to make the fund raising deadline.

In the resulting Lawsuit Interplay won all counts of Bethesda fucking with them and signing the terms of the IP sale in bad faith, but in the end Masthead got excluded from presenting that work was being done on the Fallout MMO and that killed the case.

Rather than going to an expensive trial that they would probably loose without Masthead, despite the fact that the only reason they had to sign on Masthead was because of Bethshitta, Interplay settled with then on the terms that Bethshittia would pay their legal bills and Interplay would surrender their claim to sell the first three games at midnight 2013.

... now before you open your mouth to white knight for Bethesda any further, remember how they also fucked Obsidian out of their royalties due to a low Metacritic score (and nearly caused Obsidian to close down) when every complaint about New Vegas was due to bugs in the game ... which was Bethesda's fault because they were the ones doing QA and Obsidian had no control over the state it shipped in.

Interplay is a sad shell of what it once was, and run by an immoral ass who has caused every one of his own problems; but at the same time every third party game developer that has worked with ZeniMax / Bethesda has publicly stated they will never work with them again, most have incurred financial hardship due to Bethshittia's jackassery, and not even their own internal development teams can ship a stable product.

For all its faults, Interplay was the first (and only ones to go out on a limb with an unproven business model) to sign on with GOG; without Interplay taking the leap GOG very well may have never gotten off the ground.

I think maxirafer just misunderstood what GOG was saying. English is obviously not his first language.

Quoting this just in case anyone later in the thread still has the question.

Farewell Fallout, and happy new years to GOGers around the world.

:)

I wonder if it is Interplay trying to come back to life, again. Or if Bethesda is becoming stingy. I sure hope they don't go after other titles in the GOG catalog.

OK, because Obsidian don't have a track record of releasing incredibly buggy games! That company should of shut down years ago.

Colin McRae and TOCA Race Driver were the first games removed from GOG, with the removal date being known in advance. GOG suggested to its customers to download the games in advance, since they weren't sure if the games would still be available for download. The games are still on people's libraries, so GOG's fears were unfounded. Only removed game pulled from libraries was Chessmaster 9000, and that was temporarily due to a Glitch.
There was also the case of the Mac installer for Imperial Glory, but GOG didn't have the rights to sell it in the first place as I recall.
Ah, so the removal of Colin McRae and TOCA Racing was "forced" by the car companies, since they didn't sign a contract with GOG. Gotcha. I thought GOG removed the games on their own, since they no longer had the rights to sell them. Good to know that there was force involved.

Do you not beat up your neighbor because he would sue you or because it's not right? So are you forced not to beat up your neighbor because of suing and/or jail time, or are you voluntarily doing it because you shouldn't do it? What about burning down houses?

lot of people would prefer if Bethasda put theirs older titles on GOG
even to have them next to theirs STEAM catalogue (so owned twice)

p.s. i do miss Colin McRae badly on GOG too :(

Congratulations on Bethesda/Zenimax that makes all the efforts possible day by day to be downright hated by their "clientele".

*thumbs up*

Obsidian have got to be one of the most constantly fucked over devs in the business. It's surprising Alpha Protocol was as good as it was considering how much they get dicked around by Sega.

Good thing those who bought the games can keep them on their shelf.

If the games had been removed from the shelves as well, this would mean we have to backup everything bought here on Gog.