Sony Is Suing Tencent Over Shameless Horizon Knock-off Game Light of Motiram

Sony is suing Tencent, alleging its upcoming crippled Light of Motiram is "a slavish clone of SIE's...Horizon bid of video games."

The complaint, which was filed successful a California tribunal past week, alleges that Tencent's upcoming escapade crippled Light of Motiram is illegally akin to Horizon: Forbidden West and Horizon: Zero Dawn successful everything from carnal plan to protagonist to selling materials. The ailment outlines galore similarities, comparing assorted selling screenshots from some games arsenic good arsenic the crippled descriptions.

Like Horizon, Light of Motiram takes spot successful a post-apocalyptic satellite overrun by elephantine robot dinosaurs who roam large, earthy environments specified arsenic tropical forests, deserts, and snowy mountains. Humans, conscionable similar successful Horizon, unrecorded successful tribal groups and indispensable combat the instrumentality animals, who besides mostly enactment up with those successful Horizon, to survive. Both games adjacent diagnostic red-haired women protagonists that deterioration precise akin outfits and styles, and Motiram adjacent has its pb sporting a instrumentality awfully akin to Aloy's "Focus" earpiece.

A examination betwixt the 2 games' selling imagery, arsenic shared successful Sony's complaint.

The ailment besides cites headlines from a fig of gaming websites, including Kotaku, TheGamer, and GameRant, arsenic good arsenic assorted Steam and Reddit comments, that each remark connected the similarities betwixt the 2 games and the likelihood that Sony would astir apt writer implicit the issue.

"The commonalities with Horizon disclosed successful the Light of Motiram promotional crippled trailer and different promotional materials included not lone identical communicative and gameplay themes, cultural, and quality elements, but besides creation style, landscapes, architectural and creation elements, colour palettes, fonts, and symbols. Lighting and points of presumption are besides highly similar," the ailment reads.

Also per Sony's complaint, Tencent allegedly knew precisely what it was doing here. Sony says that Tencent began processing Light of Motiram successful 2023, and approached Sony astatine the 2024 Game Developers Conference to inquire for a licensing woody to make its ain Horizon game. Sony turned Tencent down. But Tencent kept processing Light of Motiram anyway. Sony besides claims it approached Tencent informally to resoluteness the copyright quality erstwhile it became alert of the game, but erstwhile it did so, Sony says Tencent tried erstwhile again to licence Horizon. Sony erstwhile again refused, and Tencent allegedly moved guardant with the game's promotions and playtests.

Sony is suing Tencent for copyright and trademark infringement, arsenic good arsenic mendacious designation of origin. It's asking the tribunal to forbid Tencent from infringing its copyright, for costs and damages of up to $150,000 for each abstracted enactment successful Horizon that's been infringed, and request that Tencent present each infringing materials to Sony for destruction.

Meanwhile, Light of Motiram has a Steam listing, but nary merchandise day conscionable yet.

Rebekah Valentine is simply a elder newsman for IGN. You tin find her posting connected BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a communicative tip? Send it to [email protected].