WB Games has announced its intention to shut down its Westworld mobile game, which was at the centre of a lawsuit with Bethesda.
Bethesda accused WB Games and the developers at Behaviour – who worked with Bethesda before collaborating with WB Games – of stealing the code for Fallout Shelter in order to make the Westworld game, going so far as to call WB’s title a “blatant rip-off” of their Fallout spinoff.
Warner Bros responded at a later date by stating that “the assertions by Bethesda Softworks that Warner’s Westworld mobile game improperly used source code from Bethesda’s Fallout Shelter are as surprising as they are unsubstantiated.” We later heard, via IGN, that Behaviour and Bethesda had “amicably resolved the lawsuit”.
Now, making no reference to the statements, legal action and allegations that came before, the Westworld Mobile Twitter account has announced the game’s upcoming shutdown. Here’s the tweet:
The game has already been removed from Google Play and the Apple App Store, and in-game purchases have been deactivated. The game itself will remain active until April 16th 2019, at which point it will be shut down for good. If you have any in-game currency, then, you’ll want to spend it – or try to seek a refund – before that date arrives.
We may never know the exact intricacies of the legal case that took place here, but, at the very least, we can enjoy a wry smile at this life-imitating-art moment. There is something quite Westworld-y about the plug being pulled on a virtual world, isn’t there?