Bethesda filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. and Behaviour Interactive a few days ago, over the new Westworld mobile game that the latter two had launched recently. The Westworld game bears a lot of extreme similarities to Fallout Shelter, the mobile Fallout game that Bethesda launched back in 2015, but that much makes sense- given that the two games are in the same genre, by the same developer.

However, Bethesda’s lawsuit alleges there are similarities beyond just that- Bethesda says that the Westworld mobile game outright has the same code that Fallout Shelter used, because Westworld apparently has the exact same bugs that an earlier build of Fallout did. Which in and of itself would be a petty damning and conclusive bit of evidence.

Warner Bros. disagrees, however, and in a statement, they have sharply rebuked all allegations in Bethesda’s suit. “As one of the world’s leading creators of intellectual property, including the ground-breaking television series Westworld, Warner Bros. has a deep respect for intellectual property rights,” the statement reads. “As such, the assertions by Bethesda Softworks that Warner’s Westworld mobile game improperly used source code from Bethesda’s Fallout Shelter are as surprising as they are unsubstantiated.  Warner Bros. has been assured by the game developer, Behaviour Interactive, that Bethesda’s allegations are untrue and that none of Bethesda’s code was used in the Westworld game. Moreover, contrary to Bethesda’s baseless accusation, Warner Bros. at no time “induced” Behaviour to use the Fallout Shelter code in Westworld.”

So- either Bethesda jumped the gun here, or Warner Bros. is lying. In either case, I have to imagine this is not a case that will actually go through the courts- I imagine a full fledged out of court settlement between the two parties may be in the cards for this one. Fallout Shelter is available now on mobile, PC, and consoles, and Westworld on mobile devices.

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?