from the phew dept
It can be really amazing just how bad video game companies have been, and currently still are, when it comes to preserving the very culture that they help to create. While groups like GOG are at least attempting to pressure more developers and publishers to take efforts to preserve older games, it’s simply a fact that there is a massive and historical headwind they’re facing. For a long, long time these companies essentially zeroed out any concern about preserving their work in favor of copyright enforcement coupled with a disinterest in their side of the copyright equation.
We’ve already seen how the ability to legitimately buy some games, such as No One Lives Forever, has been blocked for over a decade over a jumble of potential intellectual property concerns. But the story of the source code for two absolute classic games, Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, and how it almost became completely lost in the ether is a great example of the interest deficit in preservation going back years.
In April, Fallout creator Tim Cain explained that when he left Interplay in 1998 he was ordered to destroy any game assets or code he was holding onto that didn’t belong to him. This included the source code for the OG Fallout. Cain complied, which made it awkward when Interplay called a few years later asking if he had Fallout’s source code still. He thought it was a trap; turns out, Interplay had actually lost the code for it and Fallout 2. And Cain had assumed that due to Interplay’s “destroy it all” policy, the source code for the old RPGs were lost and destroyed. Thankfully, that’s not the case.
On May 5, Videogamer reported that it had heard from Interplay founder and game designer Rebecca Heineman that she had the source code for both Fallout and its sequel, as well as many other Interplay classics. She started preserving every Interplay game after working on the studio’s 10 Year Anthology: Classic Collection and realizing how poorly the company’s past work was being saved for the future.
As Kotaku goes on to note, Heineman received the same order to destroy any copies of any source code she may have made or face litigation as well. She simply chose to ignore that demand. No lawsuit was ever filed and Heineman has indicated she kept her copies because she believed any lawsuit from Interplay would be doomed to fail.
And it’s a damned good thing she did. It appears hers is the only copy of the source code for both of these games. And it should cause all of us who care about game preservation to shiver to our spine that the same company that demanded all copies of source code by deleted couldn’t be bothered to secure the master copy itself. What if Heineman had followed orders like a good soldier? The code would simply be lost to the world, gone forever.
And before anyone thinks otherwise, no, Heineman isn’t some bad actor simply looking to defy all the rules without any deference to corporate interests.
As for why Heineman hasn’t released the code to the internet, she says that could only happen with permission from Bethesda (now the owners of Fallout) as they are still selling Fallout and Fallout 2 today.
“I need expressed permission to release, despite the source code being pretty much obsolete,” said Heineman. “I [haven’t] gotten around to asking them. They are on my list.” She is a busy woman, working on bringing back MacPlay and porting more games to Mac. But hopefully, when she does ask, Bethesda is cool with her sharing these important pieces of game history online.
Yes, hopefully. Otherwise we may be back at this all over again in the future.
Filed Under: archives, fallout, preservation, source code, video game preservation, video games
Companies: bethesda, interplay
