Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West publishers Sony have called in the lawyers over Tencent’s upcoming Light of Motiram, arguing in a lawsuit filing (spotted by Reuters) that the post-apocalyptic action adventure looks a little too much like their post-apocalyptic action adventure. The case alleges that Light of Motiram, currently in development at Tencent subsidiary Polaris Quest, is a “slavish clone” of Guerrilla Games’ original series, and seeks to block its release on copyright infringement grounds.
So far, so Nintendo vs Palworld. Except Sony’s complaint also claims that Tencent approached them in 2024, supposedly with work on Light of Motiram already underway, and unsuccessfully pitched the Japanese publishing giant with a plan to produce a new, official Horizon game under license. The suggestion being that Tencent knowingly created a game they intended as a direct spinoff or sequel, then continued with it anyway after failing to win Sony’s agreement.
Under US law, copyright or trademark infringement doesn’t need to be provably intentional in order for a violation to have occurred, but Tencent will have a hard time arguing that the similarities are just happenstance if Sony can show this meeting did occur. A harder time, rather, because come on, just look at it. Even if Guerrilla don’t hold the patents on combat-rolling girl protagonists or leafy far futures, the robo-tribal aesthetic, metallic beast designs, post-collapse narrative setup, and even the trailers’ wailing soundtrack work are so Horizonish you can practically hear Ashly Burch whispering puzzle solutions to herself.
Nonetheless, Light of Motiram has enjoyed at least some degree of… if not legitimacy, at least acceptance, especially compared to similarly borrow-happy games like the Ebola series of Resident Evil copycats. Nvidia, for example, have showcased its promised DLSS 4 features. Maybe that’s why Sony have taken the better part of a year to get the courts involved, perhaps having hoped it would fade into obscurity rather than sticking around as “Horizon with survival crafting” – not unlike a certain “Pokemon with guns”.
All that said, I’m not sure that I’m actually on board with any legal book-throwing. For one thing, it all sounds rather petty for a company of Sony’s stature. Their complaint that the release of one originality-challenged RPG (that doesn’t currently have a release date) would cause “irreparable harm to SIE and the consuming public” is particularly laughable when the same document boasts how the Horizon series has shifted 38 million copies. Besides, let’s be honest, everyone copies everyone at least a tiny bit in modern gamesmaking, and arguably across art as a whole. Imagine where we’d be if even just the relatively obvious inspirations and homages were grounds for a jury trial: we wouldn’t have games like the Warhammer 40K-aping StarCraft, or the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Warcraft that is Dota 2. And then I’d have never spent 2,800 hours of my life in the latter, getting angry at little wizard men for not hitting magic rocks when I ask them to.
…You know what, scratch that, sue ’em Sony. Sue ’em all.
