Westworld Mobile is Now Free to Play, but the Title Has Been Sued by Bethesda for Being a ‘Blatant Rip-Off’ of Fallout Shelter

Westworld is a science fiction TV series, adapted from the 1973 film of the same name, released by HBO in 2016. It has been considered to be the successor to the Game of Thrones series, and now Warner Bros. just announced that Westworld Mobile is free to play on Google Play and App Store. However, the game has been met with some legal troubles.

For fans of Westworld TV series, Westworld Mobile is a nostalgic adaption game of the TV series. All the main characters, including Dolores, Maeve, Teddy, Logan, etc., appear as cartoon figures in Westworld Mobile. Also, the game is designed mainly in two scenes, the upper level which is the Delos Park, and the lower level which is the research rooms. Other locations in the TV series, such as Sweetwater, Escalante, and Rasmussen, also appear in the Westworld Mobile, and players can create more than 170 custom robotic hosts.

The background story of Westworld takes place in a western theme park, where it has scatted with all kinds of grievances between robotic hots and humans tourists by their live action role play and immersive theater experience. The plays discuss the morality of violence in live games combining with the resistance theme of artificial intelligence and self-awareness of robots against human desire and mortality.

The slogan of Westworld is “DON’T PLAY GAMES. PLAY GOD.” The player is a new employee of the Delos Park company in the game, and they become the “God” behind the scenes to promote what will happen in the Westworld, customizing robotic hosts to appropriately match the tourists of the park and to satisfy their inner desires, no matter they are dark, bloody, wild, or romantic those thoughts are.

However, as soon as Westworld went online yesterday, Bethesda Softworks filed a lawsuit again Warner Bros. and Behaviour Interactive, stating that Westworld Mobile violates its intellectual poverty of Fallout Shelter (2015).

According to the suit file from IGN.com, Bethesda states:

The Westworld game is blatant rip-off of FALLOUT SHELTER. 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.

For example, the demonstration version of the Westworld game includes visible software ‘bug’ or code defect present in an early version of FALLOUT SHELTER code delivered by Behaviour to Bethesda during game development. 

Regarding this, Bethesda demands that Westworld Mobile be removed from the market.