Fallout: Nuka Break Season 2 Kickstarter

They've been allowed to use the Fallout license commercially and free of charge?? Good for them if so, the series was quite good :) I would be very careful if i were them if Bethesda didn't agree to use their license like this (doesnt seem to say anything about it on their page).
 
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Well I guess it has something to do with it being a fan made / funded non-profit parody, since Bethesda does know about it and there has been no c&d letters.
 
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Who's gonna verify that they really use all this money for the project though? I wonder if Beth would be OK with FO mods being funded this way too..

I'm not against it though, i think it's very cool of Bethesda.
 
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lumiapina said:
Well I guess it has something to do with it being a fan made / funded non-profit parody, since Bethesda does know about it and there has been no c&d letters.
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Yeah they've mentioned it before on Bethblog (though I think their lawyers wouldn't want them plugging kickstarter), Obsidian included a reference to them in a FNV DLC, and they raised the money for season one this way (except using indiegogo instead of kickstarter.) Despite someone spamming the Wasteland 2 kickstarter live stream about "Bethesda suing and sending ceases and desists to fansites," that's not something they do at the drop of a hat.
 
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comment on the kickstarter page

Andrew Franklin about 13 hours ago

I'm curious what happened to the exclusivity deal with IGN, weren't they supposed to fund the new season in exchange for exclusive first publishing rights?
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quote from the first video
Fallout and the Fallout logo are copyright Bethesda Softworks or the copyright owners (reference to Interplay dispute maybe?). So please, don't sue us
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Earnest Cavalli for The Portland Mercury commented that, while Bethesda may eventually shut down the series with a cease and desist order, until then "we can all enjoy the sweet metafiction that Bethesda has so long denied us"
non-profit or not, i can't see Bethesda allowing people to ask for handouts to do this. If people did this on their own and operated on a loss that's one thing, but a company can't ignore potential investors. If they were smart they'd get themselves associated..that is, if they aren't already in secret partnership.

When the CEP for NWN was first created (from the ashes of an earlier, failed project) I was personally contacted by one of the distributers who wanted to give me as manyu free CD's of it as I wanted. I got 30. Now, someone had to pay for this - they got donors from somewhere. It was hardly a cause worth shilling out about $50 in parts and shipping - after all, who else got copies?

That said, it may not be likely - why else would this group ask for money?
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Lucky Day said:
non-profit or not, i can't see Bethesda allowing people to ask for handouts to do this. If people did this on their own and operated on a loss that's one thing, but a company can't ignore potential investors. If they were smart they'd get themselves associated..that is, if they aren't already in secret partnership.
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If I were Bethesda, I wouldn't mind as long as these guys aren't making a profit from it.

The way I see it… it's promotional material for the Fallout franchise being done at someone else's expense.
 
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Lucky Day said:
non-profit or not, i can't see Bethesda allowing people to ask for handouts to do this. If people did this on their own and operated on a loss that's one thing, but a company can't ignore potential investors.
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Well they let them do this once before already. They got on indiegogo last year and that's how they funded season 1. The fan-film (basically acted like a pilot episode) was the only one they didn't raise donations to do.
 
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JDR13 said:
If I were Bethesda, I wouldn't mind as long as these guys aren't making a profit from it.

The way I see it… it's promotional material for the Fallout franchise being done at someone else's expense.
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Completely, yes it certainly serves as a kind of promotion.

However, if you don't aggressively defend any infringement of your trademark it can lose protected status as a "strong" mark, which puts Bethesda in a tenuous position.

They might want to consider some sort of royalty free non-commercial license for this type of project. Although even that could potentially generate chain-of-title issues in the event Beth decides to develop a feature at some point.
 
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CountChocula said:
Completely, yes it certainly serves as a kind of promotion.

However, if you don't aggressively defend any infringement of your trademark it can lose protected status as a "strong" mark, which puts Bethesda in a tenuous position.

They might want to consider some sort of royalty free non-commercial license for this type of project. Although even that could potentially generate chain-of-title issues in the event Beth decides to develop a feature at some point.
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Well one thing going in their favor is that this is definitively derivative - as in it is set in the same fallout universe - and is very clear about what it refers to. That is to say that it does not particularly threaten to dilute the trademark because it doesn't represent some other separate thing also called Fallout. This means that their work does not threaten to genericize the trademark, and so could not easily be used by someone else to argue the trademark was abandoned. In this way it is probably seen by Bethesda/Zenimax legal team as one would view star-trek fan fiction.

Consider the whole "scrolls" case. The concern that drove Bethesda's legal advisers to bring suit was that the use of "scrolls" in that case would threaten to genericize their trademark. This is similar to the fear that the makers of Kleenex have regarding the genericization of their trademark. While the argument of infringement in this case might be far more obvious and easy to make (both in the case of Kleenex and Fallout Nuka-Break), the threat that Nuka-Break poses to the defensibility of the trademark is negligible because of the lack of genericization.

This thinking is mostly one of cost/benefit though and of course only holds as long as they are VERY clear that they are not profiting on this and do not get too much money for it. If they raised 5 million dollars for this then Bethesda/Zenimax would possibly realize that there is a commercially feasible demand for such a product and that Nuka-Break was serving to displace the market for it more than they were serving as free promotional material and goodwill generators. Of course in that case though, one might argue they would attempt to license and fund the project rather than simply shut it down. Imagine for instance you were working on a "wasteland 2" conversion mod for fallout New Vegas. The chance that Brian Fargo would have said "no, please stop" 3 months ago would be much smaller than it would be now right? Of course if you had made such a mod and people absolutely loved it, you might get more of a "please stop, but would you send us a resume while you're at it?"
 
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I realy like the sereies it would be nice if Bethesda would chip in with some funding.
Also Tim Cain and Chris Avellon coming on board would be awsome I realy hope they reach 200% mark(+ just having thos guys anywhere near project helps promotion of whole thing).Also if there is full lenght fallout movie I realy would like this guys to do it since hollywood ALWAYS messes up movies based on games.
 
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Fallout:Nuka break has reached 200% of funding which means Tim Cain and Chris Avellone will appear both as co-writers and in speaking roles.
 
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