In Contrast To PUBG's Silliness, Bethesda's Copyright Suit Against Warner Bros. Is All About Copyrightable Source Code

from the legit-if-true dept

As the silly copyright lawsuit between PUBG and Epic Games has now come to a fortunate end, with the former dropping the lawsuit it filed over similarities in game genre and broad gameplay aspects that are absolutely not afforded copyright protection, it's probably worth highlighting a lawsuit that is the polar opposite in terms of its merits. Now, I want to stress at the outset that I have no idea as of yet whether or not the allegations that spurred this lawsuit are true or not, but it's the actual claims that are important. If adjudicated as true, those claims are absolutely valid from a copyright law standpoint.

Bethesda, makers of the Fallout franchise in its current iteration, has filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. and Behavior Interactive, which together have released Westworld, a mobile park management simulation based on the hit HBO series. Bethesda has its own simulation of this kind, called Fallout Shelter. While Bethesda's filing does indeed make much of the clear similarities between the games animations and aesthetics, as well as some of the folks behind the Westworld game clearly saying they drew inspiration from Fallout Shelter, the important difference here is this ultimately comes down to reused specific code. How this code got reused is also part of the breach of contract allegations in the suit, as it turns out that Behavior Interactive was involved in creating Bethesda's original product.

Bethesda has stated that Behaviour Interactive was involved in the creation of Fallout Shelter, before going on to make the Westworld game a few years after. Court documents reportedly state that Bethesda believes Behaviour Interactive has stolen its designs, artwork, and code, going on to use them again in this latest project in conjunction with Warner.

Bethesda's filing goes into great detail showing not only aesthetic similarities in the overall game design and character illustration, but specifically in the animations involved in the game as well as how the game screen reacts when players interact. Reading through the filing, it's fairly clear that this was more than a game merely inspired by Fallout Shelters in terms of gameplay, but instead looked to be a pretty faithful recreation of it, except themed to Westworld. Still, despite all of that, Bethesda focused on the code it alleges is reused to achieve this similarity, which is important.

And, while Warner Bros. has responded claiming all of this is false, and that Behavior Interactive has assured it that no code was reused, there is some additional evidence that sure points to that not being the case.

Aside from these mostly aesthetic similarities, it turns out that there's one other pretty suspicious thing that Bethesda has noticed, potentially giving the game away even more. Apparently, the same bugs that were originally present in an early version of Fallout Shelter have also been found in Westworld. Oh dear..

We talk a great deal about the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law specifically, but it should be acknowledged when a content creator gets this question right in its lawsuit allegations. Again, we don't know yet if the allegations of code reuse are true at this point. But someone should wave this filing in front of the folks at PUBG to show then what a legitimate copyright lawsuit in gaming looks like.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community. Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis. While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: copyright, fallout shelter, source code, westworld

Companies: bethesda, warner bros.