Sony sues Tencent over Light of Motiram calling it a “slavish clone” of the Horizon Zero Dawn series
It was only a matter of time really on this one. Sony have now formally begun legal action against Tencent for Light of Motiram.
Filed on July 25th, the lawsuit certainly doesn’t pull any punches jumping right into calling it “a slavish clone of SIE’s immensely popular, award-winning Horizon series of video games”. Sony are seeking to prevent the release of the game, along with seeking damages of “up to $150,000 for each separate work in the Horizon Franchise infringed”.
The recent trailer does look shockingly similar, as does all of their promotional material, as pointed out very clearly by Sony in the lawsuit. In my original article about the game I even said “The copying here is pretty blatant” and it really is. Everything about it screams they wanted to make a Horizon game.
Reading further into it, representatives from Tencent (a claim from Sony) did actually approach them to discuss licensing the Horizon franchise in March 2024 at GDC. Here Tencent “pitched a project to SIE, wherein they outlined Tencent’s desire to license SIE’s intellectual property rights in the Horizon Franchise to create a mobile video game set in the Horizon universe” noting that the team involved were “[d]ie-hardfans” of the franchise.
Pictured – Light of Motiram, Credit: Tencent
Clones and games inspired directly by popular games are everywhere, they appear every day. However, this looks like it’s probably just a bit too close especially with the creature and character designs, even if they’re going for a different gameplay style with it being a co-op survival game. So it will be very interesting to see what happens as a result of this one.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
