If you’re a Westworld fan, there’s a slightly out-of-tone mobile game on iOS and Android where you can build your own Westworld and interact with cartoon versions of the show’s cast, because there’s no violent ends an adorable art style can’t make funny! It’s from Behaviour Interactive, which first became visible thanks to Fallout Shelter, a cartoony riff on the classic gaming franchise Fallout where you try to save humanity from radiation and giant bugs in a shelter known as a Vault, but if your Vault dwellers do die, the adorable art style makes it funny. If the two games sound familiar, well, the company behind Fallout is alleging that’s because they got ripped off.
Variety reports that Bethesda has sued Warner Bros. and Behaviour Interactive, claiming that proprietary code from Fallout Shelter was used to make the Westworld game and that it can prove it because the games have similar bugs. Bethesda alleges Behaviour stole the code in order to get the game to market and is hoping to remove the game and get some financial redress for their troubles.
It all rests on the code; until the two games are cracked open and compared, and the contracts are carefully analyzed, it’s anybody’s guess what will unfold in the suit. Bethesda is making some fairly specific claims in this suit, which is relatively rare in this kind of thing, so they probably feel those claims can be backed up. We’ll see as the case progresses.
(via Variety)