Among the weirder stories of 2018 was this article which initially came out of TMZ of all places surrounding Bethesda suing Behavior Interactive and Warner Brothers over Westworld (Free). They alleged that Behavior Interactive, who originally built Fallout Shelter (Free) stole their design, artwork, and code to make Westworld, which was a shockingly on the nose clone of Fallout Shelter. As mentioned in the article, when we got a look at it back at GDC, it sort of knocked out socks off just how close Westworld was to Fallout Shelter, making the legal drama not entirely unexpected.
Last year we figured there was something to this, as Bethesda was able to point to a “smoking gun," in that Westworld experienced identical bugs to early versions of Fallout Shelter. And, well, if you were hoping for some kind of juicy legal conclusion where WB and Behavior Interactive both get hung out to dry for cloning Bethesda’s game… Well, I’ve got boring news for you, per a single-sentence press released that was just sent out:
ROCKVILLE, Md. (Jan. 3, 2019) — Bethesda Softworks and Behaviour Interactive jointly announced today that the parties have amicably resolved the lawsuit Bethesda brought against Behaviour and others related to the Fallout® Shelter and Westworld mobile games.
I guess all that’s left is to speculate on what the amicable resolution was, probably money. It’s always money in these things.