Fallout creator laments the loss of the game's earliest development materials: 'I had that in digital form and was ordered to destroy it'

Vault Boy waves through a Vault door.

The original Fallout's lead developer Tim Cain has been making YouTube videos about his long and eclectic career for a while now, and he keeps dropping fascinating tidbits about the foundations of what is now one of gaming's biggest series. Such as: What the Vaults were actually for, or why specifically the first game is set in 2161.

Last year Cain shared that publisher Interplay had threatened to sue him after he left Black Isle, as a result of which he destroyed a treasure trove of the earliest Fallout material, from notes on concept meetings to various builds. Cain didn't want the hassle of that kind of fight at the time, which is perfectly understandable, but in his latest video he returns to the topic of game preservation, and just how bad a lot of companies are with this stuff.