Fallout Shelter developer Bethesda Softworks is suing Warner Bros Entertainment and the creator of a mobile game based on HBO’s Westworld for creating “a blatant rip-off” of its game. According to the lawsuit, obtained by Polygon, Westworld Mobile developer Behaviour — which Bethesda contracted to develop Fallout Shelter — “breached its contract with Bethesda and utilized its restricted access to Bethesda’s intellectual property.” The lawsuit further alleges that Westworld Mobile rips copyrighted computer code used by Fallout Shelter, as well as “highly similar game design, art style, animations, features, and other gameplay elements.” This even extends to the bugs present in both games, Bethesda continues. Westworld Mobile’s similarities to Fallout Shelter have been commented on regularly by press, with many noting its similarities. Fallout Shelter, released in 2015, allows players to run their own Vault as an overseer; players have an ant farm view of rooms, as well as the ability to customize their shelters, harvest resources, and recruit new citizens. In Westworld Mobile, players run the titular theme park and create new hosts to occupy it. The game launched earlier this week for iOS and Android. Bethesda claims that both Behaviour and Warner Bros have “benefited unfairly” from its game. “By recreating Fallout Shelter with Westworld’s ‘western’ theme,” the lawsuit claims, “Behaviour and Warner Bros benefit from the success, good will, and consumer base created by Fallout Shelter. The Westworld mobile game seeks to attract players by its misappropriation of intellectual property of Bethesda. Warner Bros intended for the games to be similar to be able to court the same consumers.” Bethesda is seeking statutory damages, actual damages, Behaviour’s and Warner Bros’ profits, and restitution, as well as attorneys’ fees and costs.<doc-sep>Bethesda is suing Warner Bros. and Behaviour Interactive over the new Westworld video game which it claims copies parts of 2015’s Fallout Shelter, according to court documents filed with the U.S. District Court for Maryland. Advertisement The lawsuit was filed June 21 and seeks to have money for damages awarded and for Warner Bros. to stop selling the game. “The Westworld game is a blatant rip-off of Fallout Shelter,” Bethesda charges in their lawsuit, arguing that Behaviour is inappropriately using code developed while assisting the development of Bethesda’s game. In the suit, Bethesda asserts that it paid Behaviour in 2014 to develop parts of Fallout Shelter and now claims that studio used some of the designs, artwork, and code commissioned for that game to help create Warner Bros. newly released Westworld mobile game. Exhibit L of the lawsuit in which Bethesda cites an article by Kotaku to argue that the two games look very similar. Photo : Bethesda ( Bethesda Softworks LLC v. Behaviour Interactive, Inc. et al ) The Westworld game resembles Fallout Shelter, a management sim released three years ago for smartphones and later on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and most recently the Nintendo Switch. Kotaku ran an article saying as much, which Bethesda even cites as Exhibit L in the suit, despite still having the site blacklisted and never responding to our emails. The new lawsuit filed yesterday, however, alleges Behaviour actually used some of the same underlying code for both games, which would put it in breach of its contract with Bethesda. “Under the agreement, all Behaviour work product of any kind, including code, designs, artwork, layouts, and other assets and materials for Fallout Shelter were authored and owned by Bethesda ab initio as works made for hire,” Bethesda claims in the suit. The video game publisher also alleges that Behaviour “utilized its restricted access to Bethesda’s intellectual property, including Bethesda’s copyrighted code, trade secrets, and other rights” in order to bring get the Westworld game out as soon as possible and calls it a “blatant rip-off of Fallout Shelter.” The company goes on: Advertisement Part of Bethesda’s lawsuit attempting to show that the character models in both games look the same. Screenshot : Bethesda ( Bethesda Softworks LLC v. Behaviour Interactive, Inc. et al ) “Working with the same copyrighted computer code used by Fallout Shelter, Westworld has the same or highly similar game design, art style, animations, features and other gameplay elements as Fallout Shelter, all of which are owned by Bethesda.” Advertisement A section of Bethesda’s lawsuit arguing that Westworld duplicates the visual layout of Fallout Shelter. Screenshot : Bethesda ( Bethesda Softworks LLC v. Behaviour Interactive, Inc. et al ) Beyond the surface similarities between how the two games look and play, Bethesda claims that there are programming bugs and defects that are present in both games. It cites as one example an apparent bug in the “demonstration” mode of the Westworld game. “Specifically, the view is out-of-focus and the scene that appears is far to the right and below the targeted landscape image,” the company writes. “It is as if a camera capturing the scene had been inadvertently pointed to the lower right foreground and then slowly refocuses on the central image. The identical problem appeared in initial versions of Fallout Shelter but was addressed before Fallout Shelter was released to the public.” Advertisement The rest of the suit goes on to argue what a success the Fallout brand has been, how that success in turn helped Fallout Shelter to be a popular game, and how Westworld’s allegedly ripping off the game “seeks to attract players by its misappropriation of intellectual property of Bethesda.” As a result, the publisher is seeking to recover an unspecified amount of money to compensate for damages and also get the game in its present form pulled. Neither Warner Bros., Behaviour Interactive, nor Bethesda immediately responded to a request by Kotaku for comment. Advertisement Bethesda has been involved in a number of high-profile suits against other game-makers in recent years. Last year, its parent company Zenimax won a lawsuit against Oculus Rift over violations of a non-disclosure agreement and copyright infringement. In 2012, the company settled a suit against Minecraft-maker Mojang over a trademark dispute regarding a game called Scrolls. [Update - 1:50pm, 6/28/2018]: In a statement to GamesIndustry.biz earlier today, Warner Bros. rejected the claims made by Bethesda in the lawsuit: “Warner Bros. has been assured by the game developer, Behaviour Interactive, that Bethesda’s allegations are untrue and that none of Bethesda’s code was used in the Westworld game. Moreover, contrary to Bethesda’s baseless accusation, Warner Bros. at no time ‘induced’ Behaviour to use the Fallout Shelter code in Westworld.” Advertisement Bethesda Sues Over Westworld Game by GMG Editorial on Scribd<doc-sep>Bethesda is reportedly suing Warner Bros. over the Westworld mobile game, which it claims uses Fallout Shelter code. According to TMZ, Bethesda is suing Warner Bros. and Behaviour Interactive, the developer of the game. In court documents, Bethesda reveal it contracted Behaviour in 2014 to work on Fallout Shelter before Behaviour went on to make the Westworld game for Warner. Fallout Shelter is a building and people management sim with a cute art design where you play the vault overseer. You have to keep your vault dwellers alive, playing Cupid to get them to have babies, while all sorts of things go wrong in the vault and, when you can, send your people out into the wasteland to gather resources. It looks like this: Westwork is a park management sim with a cute art design where you play as a new Delos employee and have to control the overworld from an underground bunker, creating AI hosts and matching guests with them in order to satisfy their every desire. It looks like this: So, how does Bethesda know Westworld includes Fallout Shelter code, apart from the, ahem, surface level similarities? Because the same bugs that were in an early version of Fallout Shelter are also in Westworld. Oops! Bethesda wants Westworld shut down and a cut of the profits. We've contacted both publishers for comment.<doc-sep>According to the court filings, Bethesda entered into a contract with Behaviour Interactive in 2014 to start development of Fallout Shelter, a mobile simulation game based in Bethesda's Fallout franchise. Under the agreement, all of Behaviour's work on the game would be the owned property of Bethesda, but Behaviour would retain "access to source code, game assets, and other intellectual property" related to the development of the game. As reported by Polygon , Bethesda has filed a lawsuit in Maryland U.S. District Court which alleges the mobile game Westworld, based on HBO's hit TV series of the same title, is a "blatant rip-off" of its own game, Fallout Shelter , to the extent that it was built using the exact same code. Fallout Shelter was released for iOS and Android in 2015 and quickly amassed millions of downloads. Later, versions of the game were also released on Xbox One, Playstation 4, and Nintendo Switch. The suit goes on to allege that well after the release of Fallout Shelter, Warner Bros. decided to collaborate with Behaviour to develop a mobile game of its own based on Westworld. Bethesda's suit alleges Behaviour turned around and used the exact code and assets used to develop Fallout Shelter to create the Westworld game — and they appear to have some rather concrete evidence to back that claim. From the lawsuit, Bethesda describes a specific bug that was found in a pre-release demo version of Fallout Shelter. The bug was fixed before the public release of Fallout Shelter — but the exact same bug appeared in a demo version of Westworld. "While this error was ultimately fixed in subsequent builds of FALLOUT SHELTER, the appearance of the bug in the Westworld game demo makes clear that the FALLOUT SHELTER source code was used by Behaviour in developing the Westworld game." While it may seem weird to see Bethesda taking another company to court for ripping off Fallout Shelter, a game which itself could be considered a total knock-off of the popular mobile franchise Tiny Tower, the issue here is the specific misuse of intellectual property by Behaviour to develop a game with Warner Bros. and in particular the potential breach of contract between Behavior and Bethesda. The games are undeniably similar and the question then becomes how much Warner Bros. knew about the existing contract between Behaviour and Bethesda. Bethesda alleges that "Warner Bros. expected and relied on Behaviour's ability to reuse and/or leverage Bethesda's computer code, game designs, and other intellectual property" to lay out the groundwork to further develop the Westworld mobile game. We'll have to see whether this goes to trial or is settled out of court. 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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. Update: Warner Bros. provided the following statement to Polygon: