Bethesda has been all over the news as of late due to their recent claims of copyright infringement with regards to Westworld mobile.
Bethesda Softworks, the company behind Fallout Shelter has filed a subsequent lawsuit, against Warner Bros. stating that assets were stolen from the developer Behaviour Interactive, who were previously hired by Bethesda to work on Fallout before opting out to develop the Westworld game instead.
The legal documents of the Lawsuit appeared online, specifically detailing what was stolen: “In so doing, 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,” details the document.
Now speaking to Variety, Bethesda has offered their comments on the lawsuit saying, “Bethesda Softworks has today filed a complaint in U.S. District Court against Behaviour Interactive and Warner Bros. for copyright infringement, breach of contract, and misappropriation of its intellectual property. The case arises from Behaviour’s development of a Westworld mobile game for Warner Bros. Behaviour had previously worked with Bethesda to develop Bethesda’s hit game, Fallout Shelter, and under that contract, Bethesda alone owned all resulting intellectual property, including the game’s copyrighted code.
“Behaviour illegally used the same copyrighted source code from Fallout Shelter to develop Westworld, and copied Fallout Shelter’s game design, art, animations, gameplay features, and other elements. As a result of Behaviour and Warner Bros’ unlawful conduct, Westworld is a blatant ripoff of Fallout Shelter with largely superficial, cosmetic changes.
“Bethesda will vigorously protect its legal rights in the valuable intellectual properties it owns, and take legal action whenever those rights are being infringed.”
Warner Bros have not responded as of yet – stay tuned to Gameranx.com and we’ll have the news as soon as it drops.
