Microsoft’s acquisition of the software house that created, among others, The Elder Scrolls, Bethesda, may have suffered a delay, as a lawsuit regarding the entire operation seems to have begun. X-Law Group has in fact filed a lawsuit against Bethesda in July 2019, starting a class action regarding the Fallout 4 Season Pass and its sale price, and could ask for compensation of about a billion dollars.
Lawyers have already filed documents to get more information and may even block the sale of Bethesda. In case the deal allows Bethesda to free itself from all liability, as it is part of a new legal entity, X-Law Group said that “What we’re going to try and do is go in and ask a judge to stop the sale between Microsoft and Bethesda to preserve the assets.”
If the class action goes to trial, we may have to wait until 2022 for a conclusion. Bethesda’s fault? Having promised, in 2015, that all future DLCs of the game would be provided to players for free with the purchase of the Season Pass for $30, while in reality for the subsequent contents, users were forced to shell out additional money to purchase them separately.
Microsoft, as we recall, has acquired not only Bethesda Softworks, but the entire group of ZeniMax Media, which, in addition to the team responsible for The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, includes id Software (Doom, Quake, Rage), Arkane Studios (Deathloop, Prey, Dishonored), MachineGames (Wolfenstein, Indiana Jones), Tango GameWorks (GhostWire Tokyo, The Evil Within) and the lesser knownRoundhouse Studios and Alpha Dog Games.
All the ZeniMax subsidiaries should almost certainly follow the same logic applied so far to the teams under the Xbox wing, which up to now, in recent years, have released all their exclusives on Xbox Game Pass on day one.
We just have to follow the story to find out who between the two sides will finally be right.
