Bethesda’s Fallout Shelter, their first mobile game, which released back in 2015, was actually developed by studio Behaviour Interactive, a studio that went on to make a new Westworld mobile game for Warner Bros., which just came out. The Westworld mobile game, based on the HBO hit series of the same name, bears more than a passing resemblance to Fallout Shelter in terms of its gameplay loop, which sees you oversee a theme park you have to manage, with a similar UI and art style as Fallout Shelter‘s vault management.
But you know what, those kinds of similarities are common between two games in the same genre- even more so when those two games are by the same developer, right? What’s not common is outright code from one of the games ending up in another, to the extent that even the bugs of one of the games are recreated wholly in the other game. And yet, hilariously enough, that is exactly what has happened here.
Bethesda is pointing out that the same bugs that were in an early version of Fallout Shelter are also in Westworld, implying that the exact same code may have been used wholesale in the new game. Which, you know… that code was Bethesda’s property, that Behaviour has now taken without its permission. And Bethesda is not happy about that.
TMZ reports that Bethesda is suing Warner Bros. and Behaviour Interactive, the developer of the game. Depending on how strong Bethesda’s case is, this could get messy for Warner and Behaviour.
Meanwhile, in other news, Fallout Shelter recently came out on Nintendo Switch and PS4- maybe go check it out there?
