Bethesda Softworks is suing Warner Bros. and Fallout Shelter co-developer Behaviour 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.
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.”
The suit also alleges that “Behaviour breached its contract with Bethesda and utilized its restricted access to Bethesda’s intellectual property, including Bethesda’s copyrighted code, trade secrets, and other rights, to compress its development timeline, reduce costs, and quickly bring the Westworld mobile game to market, and offer players the widely popular gameplay experience found in Fallout Shelter.”
The suit points out similar gameplay features, including “cartoonish 2D characters in a 3D environment” and the underground multi-room facilities that players explore and build, in both Fallout Shelter and Westworld.
Bethesda is suing for copyright infringement, breach of contract and misappropriating trade secrets. The publisher is seeking a jury trial and damages.
Polygon has reached out to Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Behaviour Interactive for comment on Bethesda Softworks’ lawsuit, which you can read in full below.
IAmKindOfCreative on June 22nd, 2018 at 20:46 UTC »
Working through the lawsuit
[3] (summary) Bethesda hired Behaviour under a work for hire agreement. Under the agreement, all work product of any kind (code, designs, artwork, layouts, and other assets and materials) created for Fallout Shelter (FOS) are authored and owned by Bethesda.
[6] (summary) Because westworld shares a demographic with FO, Warner Bros. (WB) sought out Behaviour to make a mobile game that attracted that demographic. Behaviour broke Bethesda's contract and used Bethesda's IP (copyrighted code, trade secrets, and other rights) to compress the dev timeline and cost to bringing a game to market. That game is highly similar to FOS.
[8] (summary) (This is the good one) Behavior broke the contract and used the code, and this can be inferred by the presence of a bug in the West World (WW) game that were also present in the early, not released to market, FOS game.
[21] (summary) The contract agreement between Bethesda and Behavior states that all material (source code, content, assets, and related ip) that were created as work products for the Bethesda contract. (As I do not read legal tongue I'm unclear how this addresses the ownership of prior work by Behavior ('prior' as determined by the contract start date) which was then used in FOS. My guess is that if the copyright of prior work previously belonged to Behavior, upon use in FOS the copyright of that material was transferred to Bethesda.)
[22] (summary) Behavior agreed (in contract with Bethesda) that (oh boy this is long) Bethesda owns all ip associated with development of FOS, all versions and derivatives, artwork, game designs, game play features, programming, [...] copyrights, know-how, patents, trade secrets. Behavior's employees and contractors must execute non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements to protect proprietary info. Behavior wouldn't sell, use, transfer, publish, disclose, or otherwise make available to third parties any portion of Bethesda's confidential information. If Behavior breaches the contract they'll pay damages awarded, and reasonable legal fees.
[23] During the contract execution, Behavior was required to open all resources to Bethesda including submit all materials to Bethesda for testing and QA, and Bethesda had the right to visit Behaviour's facilities to monitor development.
[25] FOS is original and has a copyright to prove it: TX0008074781. That covers all copyrightable aspects of the game, including source code, game assets, and user interface
[28] Lots of third parties noted the WW game app is strikingly similar to FOS
[30] The strong copy of FOS gives WW the consumer base of FOS and seeks to attract players using that similarity
[32] WB knew or should have reasonably known Behavior had worked with Bethesda for FOS and expected and relied on Behaviors reuse of Bethesda ip.
[34-50] Examples of elements copied to show a substantial similarity between the games.
[53] FOS and materials used to make FOS are Bethesda Trade Secrets and offer Bethesda economic value.
[54] WB and Behaviour leveraged Behaviour's access to FOS Trade secrets for the WW Game without consent by Bethesda.
[55-63] WW game infringes on Bethesdas IP. WB contributed to and is liable for Behaviours reuse of Bethesda IP and WB has unfairly profited as a result. Behaviour breached it's contract. WB induced Behavior to do so. Behaviour and WB has acted knowingly and willingly at all times. This has hurt Bethesda.
I'm not going to bother with the counts under Claims for Relief.
Nomsfud on June 22nd, 2018 at 18:42 UTC »
Important note: Bethesda is sueing WB for stealing code made evident by identical bugs being in the game, not because the concept was ripped off
tobascodagama on June 22nd, 2018 at 17:55 UTC »
Does anybody have the details on which Fallout Shelter bugs made it into Westworld? That seems like the most damning part of this, but none of the reporting goes into detail about it.