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.