Interplay puts all of its games up for sale
Descent! Earthworm Jim! Freespace! MDK! More!
Interplay has put all of its games up for sale.
The company announced the sale of "significant IP portfolio", which means it's selling its library of video game assets and intellectual property, representing some 70 titles and dozens of characters.
Interplay currently owns the rights to some well-known video games, including Earthworm Jim, Freespace, Giants, Kingpin, Messiah, MDK, Run Like Hell, Sacrifice, Battlechess, Clayfighter, Dark Alliance and Descent.
Now, it's important to note that the Interplay of today is not the Interplay of yesteryear. The current Interplay works more as a licensing house, allowing developers to license its games for a fee. It doesn't make games itself.
In October 2015, Descendant Studios released Descent: Underground on Steam as an Early Access game under a license from Interplay. In early 2015, Interplay announced plans to remaster light-hearted '90s fighting game ClayFighter, but the game hasn't come out yet.
Back in December 2014, Interplay broke months of silence with the announcement of a Kickstarter for a board game based on the Freespace video game franchise.
Freespace Tactics was supposed to be a new tabletop game based on the science fiction space combat series that did well for Interplay in the 90s. The Freespace Tactics Kickstarter asked for $75,000. Funding for the project was cancelled on 8th January 2015 after just $16,807 had been raised.
In June 2014 it announced the launch of Freespace 2 on Steam. A month earlier it was the launch of Descent: Freespace on Steam, and before that, in April, it was Descent 3. Interplay released Battle Chess: Game of Kings as an Early Access title in March, and players have complained about a lack of updates ever since.
A 2012 revival of Black Isle, Interplay's defunct in-house game developer, failed to go anywhere. At the time it asked for funding for a game called Project V13 - what Interplay called the Fallout Online MMO it was working on before the rights to that name reverted to Bethesda in a lawsuit. Nothing came of it.
Interplay was founded in 1983 by Brian Fargo, who now runs Wasteland 2 developer inXile Entertainment. Throughout the 80s and 90s Interplay enjoyed huge success off the back of the Fallout, Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate series. But the company went bankrupt in 2006 and sold off much of its intellectual property. French entrepreneur Hervé Caen, who alongside his brother Eric bought Interplay in 1999, remains CEO.