Sony sues Tencent, claiming its Light of Motiram game is a ‘slavish clone’ of its Horizon series
Sony claims it declined a Tencent offer last year to collaborate on a Horizon game
Sony has filed a lawsuit against Tencent, claiming its upcoming game Light of Motiram is a “slavish clone” of its Horizon series.
As initially reported by Reuters, Sony has filed a lawsuit in California federal court alleging copyright and trademark infringement, and claiming that the game is so close to Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West that players could be confused into thinking it’s part of the same series.
The suit also alleges that, after starting work on Light of Motiram, Tencent then asked Sony if it wanted to collaborate on a new Horizon game, to which Sony declined. Sony claims that Tencent went ahead and made a Horizon-like game anyway.
“Upon information and belief, sometime in 2023 (and unbeknownst to Sony) Tencent started developing a video game called Light of Motiram which – just like Horizon – features a young, red-headed female protagonist and tribal groups fighting for survival among large robotic animals in a post-apocalyptic world,” the document says.
“In March 2024, at a gaming conference in San Francisco, California, Tencent executives approached Sony with a pitch: to develop its own Horizon game in collaboration with SIE. Sony rejected the idea and considered the matter closed.
“Apparently, Tencent was undeterred by SIE’s refusal to license its Horizon intellectual property. Tencent continued secretly developing Light of Motiram, eventually announcing a forthcoming game. Tencent’s promotional material bore a strong similarity to SIE’s own Horizon promotional material.”
The suit claims that the game’s Steam store page, trailer, promotional screenshots and gameplay footage all “misappropriated protectable elements of SIE’s copyrights in the Horizon franchise to a significant degree”.
Stating that it’s “far from along in recognising the striking similarities”, Sony also cites online users and websites who pointed out how much Light of Motiram looks like Horizon.
Describing the game as “a slavish clone” of the Horizon series, the suit seeks judgement that Tencent “willfully infringed” registered Horizon copyrights, as well as the Aloy character trademark. It wants an order preventing Tencent from releasing the game, as well as monetary damages.
Light of Motiram is developed by Polaris Quest, a subsidiary of Tencent. The game is described as an open world adventure set in a land “where human civilisation has ceased to exist”. This world is inhabited by mechanical animals known as mechanimals, including a large gorilla, deer and bull.
When the game was revealed last year, players pointed out the similarities with the Horizon games.
“That is shameless,” Reddit user Xeriam wrote at the time. “Like, if they at least changed the colors, made the plating chrome instead of white, made the good lights green, bad lights purple, maybe they could slip it by without people’s eyebrows raising into the stratosphere, but c’mon.”
“Hey, you guys remember when people were telling Nintendo to sue Palworld for ripping off their game (and Nintendo did but for other reasons)?” Reddit user Theonearmedbard added. “Yeah, Guerilla should absolutely be looking into some legal action, because holy shit that’s blatant.”
