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posted by martyb on Friday March 16 2018, @11:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-see^w-hear-what-you-[almost]-did-there dept.

Voice-acting rights halt effort to put Fallout 3 inside Fallout 4

An ambitious modding project that sought to recreate Fallout 3 inside Fallout 4 is shutting down over unforeseen legal issues surrounding the original game's voice acting.

"The Capital Wasteland: A Road To Liberty" project was a five-person effort to implement the base content of Fallout 3 as a mod for Fallout 4, complete with the latter game's graphical and engine improvements. In a message to supporters, though, project lead NafNaf_95 writes that the mod has been shut down after a conversation with Bethesda, in which it "became clear our planned approach would raise some serious red flags that we had unfortunately not foreseen."

That planned approach involved an audio extraction tool that would have taken the voice acting from legitimate Fallout 3 files and converted them to a form that could be used in a Fallout 4 mod. Bethesda and an outside lawyer advised the Capital Wasteland team that extracting this licensed content, which wasn't fully owned by Bethesda, would be legally questionable under copyright law and could make the modders legally liable for damages.

Apparently, having installed copies of the two games and running a utility is not good enough for Bethesda's lawyers.

Fallout 3 and Fallout 4.


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  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday March 16 2018, @07:10PM (2 children)

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Friday March 16 2018, @07:10PM (#653754) Journal

    Bethesda would, by being named, have to start paying lawyers to make filings on their behalf. Even if it was a single demand letter for removal from the suit. More likely, following what little we know of Bethesda's theory, it would begin with a demand letter of the voice actors to enforce action against Modder F. Bethesda would then have to respond to the actors, and either take action or not (and then face being named as a codefendant - which at that point seems a little sketchy that they'd just get away with a demand to remove).

    Obviously Bethesda feels it is better to take proactive action now to request the project be stopped, then pay more money later. (With a possible ulterior motive that they don't want the Fallout 3 content being used with the Fallout 4 engine because it will soften demand for current/new offerings).

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  • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Tuesday March 20 2018, @10:43PM (1 child)

    by Geotti (1146) on Tuesday March 20 2018, @10:43PM (#655682) Journal

    They have lawyers on staff that could make their filings for removal from the suit. Bethesda can go and fuck themselves for even thinking about asking those people to stop creating their mod, period.