Westworld mobile game that Bethesda called 'blatant Fallout Shelter rip-off' is closing down
After recent lawsuit settlement.
Warner Bros' mobile title based on the hit HBO sci-fi show Westworld is to close down, only weeks after the "amicable settlement" of a 2018 lawsuit in which Bethesda accused the game of being a "blatant rip-off of Fallout Shelter".
Westworld Mobile, which launched last March, is a building and people management sim which bore enough of a resemblance to Fallout Shelter, with its cutesy art style and underlying mechanics, to raise Bethesda Softworks' ire. It didn't help that both titles were developed by the same studio, Behaviour Interactive.
?Bethesda's accusations went deeper than mere design similarities, however. In last year's lawsuit, the publisher claimed that Behaviour had leveraged "Bethesda's computer code, game designs, and other intellectual property as the foundation for the Westworld game". A claim it was able to support by pointing out that Westworld appeared to feature a number of bugs identical to those found in Fallout Shelter's original release.
The legal filing also alleged 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."
It appeared that the matter was finally over when, earlier this month, Bethesda Softworks and Behaviour Interactive released a joint statement announcing that "the parties have amicably resolved the lawsuit Bethesda brought against Behaviour and others related to the Fallout Shelter and Westworld mobile games".
Now, however, a new statement has been posted to the official Westworld Mobile Twitter feed announcing the game's imminent closure. "We are sorry to tell you that the park is entering a new phase and will no longer be taking applications for new employees," it reads, confirming that Westworld Mobile has been removed from the App Store and Google play (with in-game purchases also disabled), and that the game will officially close on April 16th. No direct mention of the recent lawsuit is made, but it wouldn't seem unreasonable to connect the dots.
"We are sorry to see the Westworld mobile game go," the Twitter statement concludes, "We are thankful for all who have supported Westworld and hope that the remaining time with the game will be entertaining".