Earlier this week Warner Bros. released its new mobile game Westworld, but if you want to put yourself in control of the western-themed park, you may want to act fast as Bethesda Softworks has filed a lawsuit against WB and developer Behaviour Interactive alleging that they have used code from Bethesda’s Fallout Shelter game.
As per Variety, Behaviour was hired by Bethesda in 2014 to work on the Fallout Shelter mobile game, which features similar gameplay to Westworld. Of course, many titles do share similar gameplay, but apparently Westworld also contains the same bugs in the code that are present in an early version of Fallout Shelter, delivered by Behaviour.
An official statement from Bethesda reads:
“Bethesda Softworks has today filed a complaint in U.S. District Court against Behaviour Interactive and Warner Bros. for copyright infringement, breach of contract, and misappropriation of its intellectual property. The case arises from Behaviour’s development of a Westworld mobile game for Warner Bros. Behaviour had previously worked with Bethesda to develop Bethesda’s hit game, Fallout Shelter, and under that contract, Bethesda alone owned all resulting intellectual property, including the game’s copyrighted code.
“Behaviour illegally used the same copyrighted source code from Fallout Shelter to develop ‘Westworld,’ and copied Fallout Shelter’s game design, art, animations, gameplay features, and other elements. As a result of Behaviour and Warner Bros’ unlawful conduct, ‘Westworld’ is a blatant ripoff of ‘Fallout Shelter’ with largely superficial, cosmetic changes.”
As yet, there’s been no response from Warner Bros. or Behaviour. The Westworld game remains available to download now on iOS and Android.
