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

Bethesda believes they just re-used the code

[BenJeremy]

Considering it's the same developer, and the Westworld game seems to be just a reskin/mod of their Fallout Shelter game, complete with the same bugs, the lawsuit isn't surprising.

I have no problem with this lawsuit, unlike the "similarity" lawsuits like the PUBG/Fortnite stupidity.

Re:Did they have it written into a contract

[LordKronos]

Did they have it written into a contract that they couldn't re-use code? If so they company's boned, but if not,

Actually, it's the reverse of that. Unless it's written into the contract that they CAN reuse the code, the company is probably boned.

Generally the law is that whoever writes the code keeps the copyright, unless someone else paid them to write it (ie: a work for hire) and the contract did not state otherwise. So if they wrote the game and then sold it to Bethesda, they're OK. If Bethesda contracted them to write it and wrote in the contract that they can keep the copyrights, then they're OK. But the most likely scenario here is that Bethesda contracted them, and the contract did NOT say they can keep the copyright, which would mean Bethesda wins.

Now of course, it depends on the nature of the bugs. If, for example, the bug is the result of some code library they wrote years ago (before the contract), then that particular code would not have been part of the work-for-hire and would most likely be treated like any other licensed 3rd party library.