Fallout is one of the most important games ever, especially today in 2025. We are chillingly close to the future that it describes, many PC gamers might have caught up on that fact. Today, there’s some great news regarding the original duology made by Interplay, as the source code for both games is safe. Back in the day, it was a normal procedure to delete every copy of the code once the game is shipped, that way you could prevent assets and work from being stolen. This made complete sense when you didn’t wish to give an edge to a potential competitor. Back then however, clones had almost no success like they do now.
Fallout’s legacy is safe
Many preservationists actually care about all resources of the game being safe, along with the compiled game itself of course. This includes art, assets, interviews, promotional material, and even the game code itself. It seems that this legendary duology has had the luck of being properly treated as a piece of 90s art. The modding community also benefits from having the source open to them, as they can now tinker with it in any way they want.
While there’s still no news of a potential open sourcing made by the founder in question, this opens up a path to remastering the game. I think the game is already perfect however, and remastering it would remove the charm that the game has. The ideal scenario would be for those who worked at Interplay to agree to dump this code to the public, so that way people can learn how it works.
Doing dumps like this allow people to also preserve it, ensuring that it never gets lost to time. There’s entire foundations dedicated to preserving games as art, and they do a magnificent job all over the world. Without them and those who are kind enough to contribute to their efforts, our history would be lost.
