Earlier this month, Bethesda resolved its lawsuit with Behaviour Interactive over the latter’s Westworld Mobile game and both parties seemed pleased by the resolution. However, today Behaviour has revealed that the Westworld Mobile game will be shutting down, suggesting that the settlement wasn’t as amicable as previously thought.
For diehard Westworld Mobile players things had not been looking good for a while. The last major update for the game was released back in October and the evidence supporting Bethesda’s claims that the game copied Fallout Shelter was strong. At the time of the initial lawsuit’s filing, Behaviour and WB claimed that no code was copied, but Bethesda was quick to point out that Westworld Mobile even featured the same bugs as Fallout Shelter, which made it harder to deny.
After that initial lawsuit filing, things went quiet on the Westworld Mobile front until early January, when Bethesda sent out a press release saying that the “parties have amicably resolved the lawsuit.” Aside from that, neither Bethesda nor Behaviour Interactive were willing to disclose the details of their resolution, but now fans can start to read between the lines. Still, it’s possible the settlement didn’t include the shutdown of Westworld Mobile, but the financial compensation necessary to reach a resolution led to that anyway.
As of this writing, mobile users can no longer download Westworld Mobile from the App Store or Google Play, but those who already own the game have a little more time with it. On April 16th, the game will officially close, so players are encouraged to spend what in-game currency they may have left. Apparently, there will not be any option to refund purchases, although the ability to buy more currency has already been turned off.
Unfortunately, a little extra time is hardly a worthwhile recompense for those that have stuck with the game since the beginning. Apparently, there are story beats that will now go left unresolved and those who put a lot of money into the game will lose access to their goods in April.