Bethesda Sues Warner Bros, Calls Its Westworld Game 'Blatant Rip-Off' of Fallout Shelter (polygon.com)

Bethesda, the video game publisher behind Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, is suing Warner Bros. and Fallout Shelter co-developer Behavior Interactive over the recently released Westworld, alleging that the mobile game based on HBO's TV series is a "blatant rip-off" of Fallout Shelter. Polygon reports: In a suit filed in a Maryland U.S. District Court, Bethesda alleges that Westworld -- developed by Behaviour and released this week for Android and iOS -- "has the same or highly similar game design, art style, animations, features and other gameplay elements" as Fallout Shelter. Fallout Shelter was originally released in 2015 for mobile devices. The game was later ported to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One.

Bethesda said in its suit that Behaviour uses "the same copyrighted computer code created for Fallout Shelter in Westworld," alleging that a bug evident in an early version of Fallout Shelter (which was later fixed) also appears in Westworld. Bethesda alleges the companies "copied Fallout Shelter's features and then made cosmetic modifications for Westworld's 'western' theme."

Comments

Re:Bethesda believes they just re-used the code

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Reminds me of the very early text adventure game that was released for the TRS-80 back in the early days.. It was just the classic text "Adventure" with the description strings replaced, to change from exploring "colossal cave" to exploring an Egyptian pyramid.

For instance: In place of the delicate ming vase and the pillow, you find a miniature mummy that will shatter if you put it back down ("drop it") unless you carry it a little way and find a "mummy case" to put it in.

If you remember the winning moves in Adventure you could run straight through this one as well. Boring...

Re:Did they have it written into a contract

[Spazmania]

Get ready for another reversal: Unless created by a direct employee (someone who gets a W2 form from you at the end of the year) "works made for hire" must fall under one of 9 categories established under the law. If the work doesn't fit in to one of the nine, it doesn't matter what the contract says: the copyright vests in the company that made it not the company that paid.

https://www.copyright.gov/circ...

Bethesda hopes Behaviour's work is a "contribution to a collective work" but generally that means a -small- contribution like one article for an encyclopedia.

Here's the lesson: don't write a contract which says you own the contractors work. The law may contradict you. Write a contract which says the contractor agrees to assign you all rights to their work. That's enforceable in court.