Fallout London's volunteer modding team to launch as a new indie studio
"Fallout London has been a great springboard for that."
Team Folon – the volunteer squad of developers who have released the ambitious Fallout 4 mod, Fallout London – is set to launch itself as a new indie studio.
Talking to the BBC (via PCGN), Folon's project lead, Dean Carter, admitted that "as much as I love the fact that this is a free project - that we can offer this thing for free for all the community - free doesn't pay our bills".
"What has been great for us is that a lot of people who have really enjoyed [Fallout London] have donated to us, and we're channelling that into Team Folon, which is what we're going to be moving into," Carter said.
"We should hopefully launch our own indie games company which will allow us to come up with our own ideas, create our own games, and work [...] without having to speak to anyone above us, such as Bethesda, or anything like that.
"It'll be completely our own thing and we can create a game that we want, that we think the community will enjoy. Fallout London has been a great springboard for that."
As for what's next for Fallout London?
"Fallout London will continue until we have all the content which we had to cut for the release. We have another ending, which we call the wild card ending - that will come out in one of the future patches. That's not going to happen soon; we can see ourselves working until the end of the year.
"We don't have ulterior motives. We wanted to do something that was fun [during lockdown], we've made something that's fun, and people have found it fun, so for us we've achieved that goal so we're very happy about it, and the reception."
Asked if Bethesda had reached out to Team Folon following all the positive coverage of Fallout London, Carter simply said: "Um, no. No, we haven't."
"There hasn't been any communication, which is strange, because we've now had communication with other people in the industry, and what I guess would be seen as their competitors. They've reached out to us, and we've spoken to them, but Bethesda themselves have not spoken to us at all, no."
He did, however, add that as this was a fan-made mod created entirely on Bethesda's own IP, Team Folon in no way believes it is "entitled" to an audience with Bethesda.
A hotfix for Fallout: London to address crashing issues is still on the way, with developer Team Folon planning a "huge" patch soon after.
The game-size fan-made mod for Fallout 4 set in the English capital released at the end of July, but players have experienced a high number of crashes and issues, including Eurogamer's Ian Higton when he streamed his playthrough.
Team Folon has since promised a fix was on the way and, in a new statement on its Discord, has reiterated its plans for the future.