Bethesda Files Lawsuit Against Warner Bros Over “Rip-Off” Westworld Game
Bethesda Softworks, the publishing company of which Bethesda Game Studios is a branch, has filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. The suit alleges that a newly released mobile game based on the HBO series Westworld is a “blatant rip-off” of Bethesda’s own Fallout Shelter. The mobile market has seen plenty of lawsuits filed over copycat games in recent years; however, this lawsuit goes further than mere similarities.
The Bethesda Lawsuit
The “Westworld” game is the work of a Montreal-based studio called Behaviour Interactive; the very same studio which worked on Fallout Shelter. Just a few days after the game’s release, Bethesda filed this lawsuit in a Maryland U.S. District Court. It alleges that Westworld; “has the same or highly similar game design, art style, animations, features and other gameplay elements”. Moreover, Bethesda also claims that Behaviour used copyrighted code; code which was created by the studio for Fallout Shelter. Bethesda cited a bug which appears in Westworld as evidence of this appropriated code. The same bug appeared in an early version of Fallout Shelter. All in all, Bethesda is alleging that the game is almost a direct copy of Fallout Shelter’s assets with simple cosmetic changes to fit the new theme.
Perhaps the more relevant part of the lawsuit, and a part which appears much more rarely in these sorts of copyright cases, was Bethesda alleging a breach of contract. The publisher claims that Behaviour Interactive broke its contract with Bethesda by using “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 Westworldmobile game to market, and offer players the widely popular gameplay experience found in Fallout Shelter.”
Bethesda’s Objectives
Although they use different art styles; both games feature “cartoonish 2D characters in a 3D environment” and similar, underground facilities. The gameplay in general certainly appears to be remarkably similar. All told, Bethesda is suing Warner Bros for breach of contract, copyright infringement, and also misappropriating trade secrets via Behaviour Interactive. The publisher is aiming to take the case to a jury trial and are looking for significant damages. While Bethesda would likely have pursued the case regardless; it’s especially important now as Bethesda has just released Fallout Shelter on the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.
The full lawsuit was published online.