Bethesda files suit against Warner Bros, says ‘Westworld’ game infringes its copyright

Bethesda Softworks is suing Warner Bros. and Fallout Shelter co-developer Behaviour Interactive over the recently released Westworld mobile game. Bethesda claims it’s a “blatant rip-off” of Fallout Shelter. The game developer is suing for copyright infringement, breach of contract, and misappropriating trade secrets and it’s seeking a jury trial and damages. As elaborated in a suit filed in a Maryland U.S. District Court, Bethesda claims the game based on the popular HBO TV series “has the same or highly similar game design, art style, animations, features and other gameplay elements” as Fallout Shelter. And that Behaviour used “the same copyrighted computer code created for Fallout Shelter in Westworld” down to a bug seen in an early version of Fallout Shelter.

Bethesda alleges the companies “copied Fallout Shelter’s features and then made cosmetic modifications for Westworld’s ‘western’ theme.” The suit also claims “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, and offer players the widely popular gameplay experience found in Fallout Shelter.”

Source: Polygon