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Bethesda Sues Warner Bros. Over Mobile Westworld Game

by Ben Reeves on Jun 22, 2018 at 12:30 PM

A few years ago, Bethesda worked with Behaviour Interactive to release a management sim based on the Fallout franchise. It was fine. Then earlier this week, Warner Bros. announced a mobile management sim based on the HBO TV series Westworld. We thought the game looked fairly similar to Fallout Shelter.

And so did Bethesda — a little too similar.

Bethesda filed a suit in a Maryland’s U.S. District Court stating, that the Westworld game features “the same copyrighted computer code created for Fallout Shelter.”

Bethesda goes on to say that a bug featured in an early version of Fallout Shelter even appears in this mobile version of Westworld on Android.

Fallout’s publisher is seeking a jury trial and damages for copyright infringement, breach of contract and misappropriating trade secrets.

[Via: Polygon]

This looks pretty bad for Behaviour and Warner Bros. Bethesda contracted with Behaviour under a work-for-hire agreement to develop Fallout Shelter, and these kind of publisher contracts generally limit developers from using the technology developed for one game on other projects. Bethesda likely has a pretty solid case here, so this suit could affect the official release of the Westworld game.

Bethesda Softworks LLC v. Behaviour Interactive, Inc. and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. by Polygondotcom on Scribd

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