Fallout secrets: it was nearly called Vault 13, and the rights went for $5.75M

This is the story of Fallout from the inside, from three small programs Tim Cain wrote for the GURPS tabletop system in 1991 to the Bethesda letter of summer 2026 that confirmed the Fallout 3 and New Vegas remasters for the first time. Everything here comes from the people who made the games: why the first one was nearly called Vault 13, who wrote "War. War never changes" and under what circumstances, how the rights went for $5.75 million, and why Obsidian never got its New Vegas bonus.

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There is a fresh reason to look back: 23 October was Fallout Day. There was no showcase this year, but Bethesda pointed back to its July letter: "we have been working on remasters for both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas", while Fallout 5 "is currently in preproduction". The series itself began with Interplay spending about a year trying to get the Wasteland rights back from EA. In Cain's words, "EA just strung them along".

Where Fallout stands now: two remasters in the works, Fallout 5 in preproduction

The key document of the year is the Bethesda Game Studios letter of 17 July 2026. It says the Fallout 3 and New Vegas remasters are in development, with no dates or platforms, that Fallout 5 is in preproduction, and that the studio's priority right now is The Elder Scrolls VI. The same letter confirmed a new project with Obsidian and a major Fallout 76 expansion called Raven Rock, a prequel to Fallout 3, planned for next year. Fallout Day 2027, the 30th anniversary, is promised as a live event in Washington

Fallout, 1997: GURPS, dinosaurs and a name picked at the last minute

Fallout grew out of three utilities Tim Cain wrote in 1991 for the GURPS role-playing system, as he explains on his YouTube channel. For the first six months he worked on the engine alone, then a scripter and an artist joined, the team grew to 15 people in the second year and about 30 in the third. The budget, he said in his GDC 2012 talk, was "about $3 million". The early story was something else entirely: a detective searches for a girl kidnapped by a cult, ends up in the past, has to kill the ape that is the ancestor of humanity, and the result is a world of intelligent dinosaurs. Cain told Kotaku in 2020: "It would NEVER be made now."

Then there is the timer people still argue about. The game gave you 150 days to find the water chip and 500 days until the mutants attacked Vault 13. Early buyers complained, and patch 1.1 on 13 November 1997 removed the 500-day limit, while the 150 days for the chip stayed. Fallout came out in October 1997 and holds 89 on Metacritic.

"War. War never changes" was written during The Simpsons ad breaks

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Cain wrote the most famous line in the series the night before the recording, because neither he nor Fred Hatch liked the finished intro script. In David Craddock's oral history he remembers: "So during the commercial interruption on Simpsons, I wrote the "War. War never changes."" Ron Perlman read both versions, and Hatch left the session early: Perlman had two baseball tickets.

Fallout 2, Tactics and Van Buren: a game in a year, a bankruptcy and "18 more months"

Fallout 2 was made in under a year. Producer Eric DeMilt told Craddock: "Feargus and I chopped the game into parts so we could get it turned around in, I think, under twelve months." Cain left at the very start of development, and the description of his video sums it up: "exhaustion, interference, lack of motivation". Feargus Urquhart became lead designer because nobody else was left to do it. Interplay was struggling at the time, and Fargo remembers: "I was constantly trying to save the company."

Fallout Tactics in 2001 grew out of a rejected pitch for an isometric shooter from the Australian studio Micro Forté. In the postmortem, producer Tony Oakden wrote that the game took 15 months, and the finished build was uploaded from Australia over FTP for almost two days at 5 KB/s. Near the end he banned the team from playing Counter-Strike.

The real Black Isle third game, Van Buren, died on 8 December 2003, when Interplay laid off the whole studio. In a 2024 video Cain says that before that an Interplay vice president asked him to assess the prototype: if it needed more than six months, it would be cancelled. Cain answered that even with crunch it needed at least a year, and added: "I'm convinced in 18 months you could have a really good game shipped." He did not get them.

How Bethesda got the rights: $1.175 million, then $5.75 million and a lawsuit over the MMO

These numbers come from Interplay's own filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In June 2004 Bethesda licensed Fallout 3 for a non-refundable advance of $1.175 million, with an option on the fourth and fifth games. In April 2007 Interplay "sold all of its rights to the IP to Bethesda for a total amount of $5,750,000", keeping only the right to an online game. That clause led Bethesda to sue in 2009, and in January 2012 a settlement had Bethesda pay Interplay another $2 million and take the MMO rights. The first game, remember, cost about $3 million to make.

Fallout 3, 2008: morphine, an Australian ban and 4.7 million in a week

Lead designer Emil Pagliarulo admitted to Gamasutra in 2009: "Structurally, Oblivion and Fallout 3 are very similar." The ending was later changed in the Broken Steel add-on because players did not want the game to stop. In July 2008 Australia refused the game classification over realistic morphine use. The drug was renamed Med-X, and in August the game got its rating. In the Japanese version you cannot detonate the bomb in Megaton.

In the first week, according to a Bethesda press release, 4.7 million copies shipped to stores, worth over $300 million. On Metacritic the Xbox 360 version has 93 and the PC version 91, the best scores in the series. This is the game being remastered now.

New Vegas, 2010: 18 months and a bonus missed by one point

Obsidian made New Vegas in 18 months on someone else's engine with tools the team had never used, project director Josh Sawyer has said. Caesar's Legion, Joshua Graham and Arcade Gannon came over from the cancelled Van Buren. And the money story became a legend. In March 2012 Chris Avellone wrote on Twitter: "Fallout: New Vegas was a straight payment, no royalties, only a bonus if we got an 85+ on Metacritic, which we didn't." The game sits at 84. Avellone later clarified that Bethesda added the bonus clause itself and that nobody cheated Obsidian.

Fallout 4 and Shelter, 2015: 111,000 lines and a game from an old trailer

Fallout 4 was kept secret until the last moment. Kotaku published casting documents with the codename Institute and a Boston setting back in December 2013, but Bethesda only confirmed the game in June 2015, and Todd Howard said at E3 that it had been in development since 2009. For the first time the hero had a voice: Brian T. Delaney and Courtenay Taylor recorded for over two years, more than 13,000 lines each, about 111,000 in the whole game. In the first 24 hours, according to the press release, around 12 million copies shipped.

Fallout Shelter grew out of a 2008 Fallout 3 ad in which the camera pulls back from a TV to the vault dwellers. Howard told Noclip: "It's like Little Computer People meets The Sims meets Fallout", and Fallout 4 was just the excuse: "I just wanted to make the game".

Fallout 76, 2018: a nylon bag, rum in plastic and 25 million players

The worst launch in the series, 52 on PC. The $200 Power Armor Edition promised a canvas bag and shipped a nylon one, and Bethesda first offered 500 in-game Atoms in return, about five dollars. Only in December 2018 did the studio promise a real canvas bag to everyone who filed a request. The $80 Nuka Dark rum from a licensee arrived in a plastic bottle when buyers expected glass. The game itself grew out of unused multiplayer plans for Fallout 4, and Howard later admitted that at launch it "wasn't really giving our audience what they wanted". Eight years on it has 25 million players, probably the longest turnaround in the series.

Every Fallout game: year, developer and score

Where to start with Fallout in 2026

If you came here from the TV show, I would start with Fallout 4: it is the most approachable and best-looking of the classic games, and the story does not need the earlier ones. If you want the best writing and choices, play New Vegas, especially since its remaster has no date yet. Fallout 3 can wait for the remaster. The first two games are worth trying if 1990s isometric views and the interfaces of that era do not put you off, because that is where it all started. Fallout 76 today is a very different game from the one that launched in 2018, and it is at its best with friends.

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