When the Westworld Game got SUED...

In June 20 18, Bethesda sued Warner Bros and Behaviour Interactive over Westworld, a mobile game based on the HBO television series. The problem was that Behaviour had previously worked with Bethesda to develop Fallout Shelter, and Bethesda accused the developer of reusing its work when creating Westworld. According to the lawsuit, Westworld had copied Fallout Shelter's game design, art, animations, gameplay features and even copyrighted source code. Bethesda also claimed that some bugs found in Fallout Shelter had appeared in Westworld, suggesting that the same code had been reused. Bethesda argued that the similarities went far beyond two games simply having similar ideas. Both games were management simulations where players built and managed an underground facility, assigned characters to different jobs and kept the people inside happy and productive. Bethesda claimed that Behaviour had used its access to Fallout Shelter's code and other intellectual property to shorten the development process for Westworld and bring the game to market faster. It sued for copyright infringement, breach of contract, misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair competition, while asking the court to stop the game from being distributed. Behaviour and Warner Bros denied Bethesda's allegations, but the lawsuit was settled before the court could issue a verdict. In December 20 18, the companies announced that they had reached an amicable settlement, although the terms were never made public. Then, in January 20 19, Westworld was removed from the App Store and Google Play, in-app purchases were disabled, and existing players were given until April 16 to use the game before its servers were shut down permanently. That made the outcome especially brutal for Westworld. A game that had launched only in June 20 18 was completely dead less than a year later, making this one of the clearest examples of a lawsuit effectively killing a game even without a judge ruling against its developers. #gaming #lawsuit #westworld