While Fallout is Bethesda’s baby these days, it wasn’t the original creator of the iconic RPG series. That was Interplay, the company that infamously told departing employees to destroy any remnants of work they had on its games. That’s led to a years-long mystery around whether the original source code for Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 actually survived, with the series’ original producer Tim Cain claiming recently shining a light on Interplay’s anti-preservation tactics. However, one of the company’s co-founders, Rebecca Heineman, has now revealed that she’s got backups of Fallout 1 and 2’s source code tucked away, safe and sound.
In one of his recent videos recalling anecdotes and interesting stories from his career, Cain described how he was ordered to destroy everything he had on Fallout and Fallout 2 after leaving Interplay, only for the company to approach him a few years later to see if he had disobeyed those orders – not to entrap him, but because Interplay had lost its own backups of the source code.
Back in 2023, Cain did also claim that Interplay eventually “managed to recover the code from an old computer found in storage” and speculated at the time that “Bethesda should have it now.” However, his recent comments about the whole debacle show that the whereabouts and existence of source code for the two RPGs is still a bit of a mystery.
That is until now, because Heineman – known for her work in videogame porting and preservation – has revealed that she possesses backups for Fallout 1 and 2 after porting the games to Mac for Interplay’s subdivision, MacPlay.
“I made it a quest to snapshot everything and archive it on CD-Roms,” Heineman tells Videogamer. “When I left Interplay in 1995, I had copies of every game we did. No exceptions. When I did MacPlay, which existed beyond my tenure at Interplay, every game we ported, I snapshotted. It included Fallout 1 and 2.”
She also backs up Cain’s comments about Interplay demanding departing staff to delete traces of their work. However, she says that “they had no legal leg to stand on which was why a suit was never filed on anyone.”
While I’m sure fans of the old PC games would love to see this source code made openly available, Heineman explains that due to the Fallout IP still being active and the games still being purchasable on certain storefronts and systems, it would “require permission from Bethesda. I hadn’t gotten around to asking them. They are on my list.”
So, the myth appears to finally be busted. Yes, Interplay told Cain and other former developers to destroy any copies of Fallout and Fallout 2’s source code. Yes, it appeared to go missing for a while. But lost forever? Thanks to Heineman, no.
For more, check out our lists of the best games like Fallout and the best apocalypse games.
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