Warner Bros Puts A Bullet In Westworld Mobile On Fallout Of Bethesda Lawsuit

Bethesda launched a very popular mobile game called Fallout Shelter, and as tends to happen anytime a game gets that popular, there were copycats. Most notably the Westworld Mobile game from Warner Brothers based on the hit HBO series of the same name seems to have too many things in common with Fallout Shelter. When Westworld Mobile launched, players and critics quickly noticed that it looked and felt very much like Fallout Shelter, so much so that Bethesda filed suit against Warner Brothers and developer Behavior Interactive in June 2018, alleging copyright infringement among other things.

Bethesda said in the suit, "Behaviour breached its contract with Bethesda and utilized its restricted access to Bethesda’s intellectual property, including Bethesda’s copyrighted code, trade secrets, and other rights, to compress its development timeline, reduce costs, and quickly bring the Westworld mobile game to market..." Warner Brothers was added to the suit because it had a direct financial interest in the game.

As it turns out, there was much more than a visual similarity between Westworld Mobile and Fallout Shelter. The two games also shared the same bugs, suggesting that Behavior Interactive had used the same source code for the two mobile games. It appears from the suit fallout, that Warner Brothers was stuck in the middle between Bethesda and Behavior Interactive. Part of the suit settlement sees Westworld Mobile closing up shop, and fans of the game who have in-game currency left will not be happy about it.

With the game disappearing, any in-game currency must be used by April 16, 2019, when the game goes offline. That means there will be no refunds given for money spent in the game, even though the game is disappearing. The private settlement between the two companies means that there was no admission of guilt. It remains unclear how Behavior Interactive thought it could get away with such blatant IP theft as this. However, the developer has made no official comment on the suit.