In June 2018, Bethesda Softworks sued Warner Bros. Interactive and Behaviour Interactive over a mobile game based on HBO’s Westworld series. Bethesda claimed the game is “a blatant rip-off of Fallout Shelter,” the Fallout-based management game that debuted in 2015 on mobile devices and came to PCs a year later.
What made the claim especially interesting is that Behaviour also developed Fallout Shelter, leading to Bethesda’s allegation that it wasn’t just visually similar, but that the studio used “Bethesda’s computer code, game designs, and other intellectual property as the foundation for the Westworld game.” The appearance of at least one bug in the Westworld demo that was identical to a bug in the initial release of Fallout Shelter seemed to bolster that claim even further.
The case has now been settled, however: Bethesda and Behaviour released a joint statement yesterday saying that the “have amicably resolved the lawsuit Bethesda brought against Behaviour and others related to the Fallout Shelter and Westworld mobile games.” The terms of the settlement weren’t revealed, but the filing says the case was dismissed “with prejudice,” which in legal terms means the dismissal is permanent, so the case can’t be brought back to court.
