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Bethesda Sues Warner Bros for 'Blatant Rip-off' of Fallout Shelter by Westworld Mobile Game

Behaviour Interactive seems to have a hand in developing both projects but may have used Shelter assets for Westworld.
Charles Singletary Jr
Charles Singletary Jr
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If you thought the PUBG vs Fortnite lawsuit was going to be peak legal excitement in the gaming industry, think again. Bethesda has filed a suit against Warner Bros calling out the similarities between Fallout Shelter and the newly revealed Westworld game and the accusation is rooted in a collaboration with Behaviour Interactive.

Polygon reported on the suit, which was filed in a Maryland US District Court. The suit alleges that Westworld "has the same or highly similar game design, art style, animations, features and other gameplay elements" as Fallout Shelter.

This suit goes a bit deeper than looking and feeling similar, as Warner Bros collaborated with Behaviour to make the Westworld game. Behaviour is the same team that Bethesda "contracted to work on Fallout Shelter solely for use by Bethesda." A part of the suit focused on this reads:

"Under the agreement, all Behaviour work product of any kind, including code, designs, artwork, layouts, and other assets and materials for FALLOUT SHELTER were authored and owned by Bethesda ab initio (meaning 'from the beginning') as works made for hire."

A bit further into the full document, which you can find here, the explicit accusation can be found:

"To bring the Westworld mobile game to market, Behaviour and Warner Bros. utilized Bethesda’s intellectual property without authorization to develop a mobile game with the same or substantially similar gameplay experience as that provided by the copyrightedFALLOUT SHELTER mobile game. In so doing, 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. The unlawful use of FALLOUT SHELTER’s design, gameplay, and copyrighted computer or source code allowed Behaviour and Warner Bros. to develop a mobile game with features and gameplay highly similar to those in FALLOUT SHELTER."
"The Westworld game is a blatant rip-off of FALLOUT SHELTER. Working with the same copyrighted computer code used by FALLOUT SHELTER, Westworld has the same or highly similar game design, art style, animations, features and other gameplay elements as FALLOUT SHELTER, all of which are owned by Bethesda"

No statements from either of the involved entities are out in the wild as of the writing of this article, but stay tuned to Shacknews for additional updates. 

News Editor
News Editor

Charles Singletary Jr keeps the updates flowing as the News Editor, breaking stories while investigating the biggest topics in gaming and technology. He's pretty active on Twitter, so feel free to reach out to him @The_CSJR. Got a hot tip? Email him at Charles.Singletary@Shacknews.com.

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