Interplay Entertainment Corp.

Interplay is a North American video game developer and publisher based in Beverly Hills, California. It was founded in 1983 by Brian Fargo and initially consisted of three programmers: Jay Patel, Troy Worrell, and Bill Heineman, who previously worked with Fargo at Boone Corporation.

Interplay initially developed text adventures, utilizing a text parser created by Fargo. They went on to produce The Bard's Tale series and other notable role-playing games such as Wasteland (1988).

Interplay played a major role during the "RPG revival" period in the late 1990s. They developed Fallout (1997) and also hosted Black Isle Studios, which developed its sequel and worked on other role-playing games. Interplay would also publish multiple games based on the Dungeons & Dragons and Star Trek licenses, as well as the Descent, Freespace, Earthworm Jim and MDK properties, among others.

Interplay Entertainment Corp., a member of the IDSA and Consumer Product Council, released products through Interplay, 14° East, Shiny Entertainment, Tantrum Entertainment, Black Isle Studios, VR Sports, Flat Cat, its affiliated labels and its wholly owned subsidiary Interplay OEM, Inc. Until 1997, they released Macintosh titles through MacPlay.

The company was acquired by Titus Interactive in May 2000, with Hervé Caen serving as CEO since. It was delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange on 9 October 2002.

In May 2004, the company dissolved its remaining development divisions amid the financial troubles of Titus Interactive. The company vacated its Irvine, California office around that time, but still existed legally and tried to continue development of a Fallout MMO game with external developers.

On 9 April 2007, Interplay sold the Fallout IP to Bethesda Softworks, but retained the right to license an MMO game in the franchise. This transfer would be further extended to all previous titles and the potential MMO on 10 January 2012 after a legal battle. Their Black Isle Studios, relaunched in 22 August 2012, was to develop Project V13 (Fallout Online) under license from Bethesda, but would stop updating in early 2014.

In 2008, the company would start selling games again, becoming one of the first publishers to list games on GOG.com.

On 24 September 2010, the company sued TopWare Interactive over the game Battle vs. Chess, claiming that it infringed their Battle Chess trademark. In 2012, they would win the case and receive US$ 200,000 with interest, and the game would be renamed to Check vs. Mate in North America.

After a relatively quiet period in the 2010s, the company would reactivate its website in the early 2020s, announcing the animated series Earthworm Jim: Beyond the Groovy, relaunching the Black Isle Studios label for the third time to port Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II for PC and newer consoles, and license out Kingpin: Reloaded.