Bethesda Softworks is reportedly undergoing legal actions over Warner Bros. and developer Behaviour Interactive over the new Westworld mobile game, which is claimed to be “a blatant rip-off of Fallout Shelter.”
TMZ first reported that they have found the legal documents pertaining to this case, which is now available here– uploaded by Polygon. It was revealed that Bethesda had a work-for-hire agreement with Behaviour on the initial development of Fallout Shelter, but later Behaviour moved on to help create the new Westworld game which just launched.
Fallout Shelter is a mobile spinoff based on the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout where you play as the Overseer, managing your vault dwellers and building facilities for their comfort living underground when the world is a wasteland. The new Westworld game, based on the HBO TV series, has you manage a park where wealthy patrons get to control AI hosts, with a lot of management and buildings to make underground.
Both games feature rather similar gameplay elements and similar cartoon artsyle, though they are distinct enough to tell apart.
Bethesda claims Behaviour is using the same code base that was used for Fallout Shelter which is contractually owned by Bethesda. The proof? Bethesda pointed one of Bethesda’s most obvious quirks that can be found on Westworld- a bug. A very specific one in that too.
Here’s the bug described in detail, taken from the document:
Behaviour’s breach of its contract with Bethesda is evidenced by the gameplay of Westworld, which uses the same copyrighted computer code created for Bethesda’s FALLOUT SHELTER game. Behaviour’s use of the computer code owned by Bethesda to develop Westworld even included the very same ‘bugs’ or defects present in the FALLOUT SHELTER code.For example, the demonstration version of the Westworld game includes a visible software ‘bug’ or code defect present in an early version of FALLOUT SHELTER code delivered by Behaviour to Bethesda during game development. This software ‘bug’ appears when a player starts up the demonstration version of the Westworld game. Specifically, the view is out-of-focus and the scene that appears is far to the right and below the targeted landscape image. It is as if a camera capturing the scene had been inadvertently pointed to the lower right foreground and then slowly refocuses on the central image.The identical problem appeared in initial versions of FALLOUT SHELTER but was addressed before FALLOUT SHELTER was released to the public. While this error was ultimately fixed in subsequent builds of FALLOUT SHELTER, the appearance of the bug in the Westworld game demo makes clear that the FALLOUT SHELTER source code was used by Behaviour in developing the Westworld game.