Never BornGAMES

Fallout Online

Project V13

Interplay rebuilt its future around an online Fallout, but financing conditions and a rights lawsuit transferred the wasteland back to Bethesda before players could enter it.

HOW CLOSE TO REALITY60/100
CATEGORYGames
LIFECYCLE2006—2012
00

Quick facts

Existence state
Never Born
Peak stage
working prototype
Research confidence
high
Last verified
01

What it was

A cancelled massively multiplayer Fallout game developed by Interplay and Masthead Studios under the codename Project V13.

The MMO planned a persistent post-apocalyptic world with factions, settlements and storylines linked to earlier Fallout games.

02

Existence timeline

Project V13 begins

Interplay starts planning a post-apocalyptic MMO.

Fallout licence retained

Bethesda's IP purchase leaves Interplay conditional MMO rights.

Production expands

Masthead joins and development milestones are announced.

Bethesda files suit

The publisher disputes whether licence conditions were met.

Work and litigation continue

The project remains active while rights are contested.

Settlement ends project

Interplay relinquishes the Fallout MMO licence.

03

Why it ended

A 2012 settlement ended Interplay's licence and cancelled the Fallout version of the project.

04

Last confirmed trace

Court records, concept art, design documents and a later playable technology demo preserve portions of the MMO.
05

What it left behind

The dispute clarified control of one of gaming's major franchises and ended its original creator's final attempt to publish a Fallout game.

06

How we classified it

The proposed archive unit never reached ordinary public access in the form being documented.

The strongest verified milestone maps to working_prototype under Arrival Score V1.

07

Sources & verification

Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.

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