Seven months ago, Tencent, the world’s biggest gaming company, revealed a new project: Light of Motiram, a futuristic open-world game from studio Polaris Quest where machines rule the land. If that sounds familiar, the actual trailer and its cybernetic animals only further implied a specific inspirational source: Sony and Guerrilla Games’ Horizon series. Now Sony is taking Tencent to court over it.
Filed on July 25, the lawsuit intends to block Tencent from releasing the game, which it argues violates Sony Interactive Entertainment’s intellectual property, while also seeking $150,000 in statutory damages for each separate work in the Horizon series infringed. In its lawsuit, Sony calls Light of Motiram a “slavish clone” of Horizon that egregiously replicates some of the signature elements found in the PlayStation series.
Notably, Sony alleges that Tencent approached them in 2024, through its Aurora Studios, with a proposal to work on a mobile Horizon spinoff game, but the Japanese company declined. Tencent’s pitch, according to the lawsuit, proposed adding “Eastern aesthetics” and “survival and crafting, pet taming,” and multiplayer components to the Horizon series. The pitch deck “included mock-ups of Eastern-inspired designs and settings, including one of Aloy […] standing on the Great Wall of China,” the suit alleges.
The original trailer for Motiram features machines decked in white and blue, much like the enemies do in Horizon, alongside aboriginal-like attire with a tech bent. The protagonists differ in that Aloy, star of Horizon, has long red hair, whereas the main character in Light of Motiram is a raven-haired woman with a shorter haircut. But the costumes share some similarities, like the predominance of brown leather. Motiram’s protagonist can also wear a helmet that makes her look even more like Aloy, and Tencent is using that combination in its marketing materials. In the lawsuit, Sony requests that Tencent hand over all such marketing materials so that it can destroy them.
Based on the trailer, Horizon’s not the only arguable influence on Light of Motiram; at one point we see the player character land on a beach in a glider much like the one in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. There’s also a vehicle that is reminiscent of Destiny 2’s sparrow bikes. And to be fair to Tencent, there are some differentiating ideas here, like co-op, base-building, and a focus on crafting. There’s the obligatory chopping a tree footage you see in most modern survival games.
But the affinity with Horizon is hard to ignore, as evidenced by fan remarks left on Light of Motiram’s trailer. “When you lend your work to your school friend and tell him to copy it but change some things,” jokes the top comment on the YouTube trailer.
Sony taps into this public sentiment throughout the lawsuit, where it cites news articles and comments that call out the similarities as “shameless” and bash Tencent’s game as “Horizon Zero Originality.”
Polygon contacted Sony Interactive Entertainment for comment on the suit and will update when the company responds. As of this writing, Light of Motiram still has pages on Steam and the Epic Games Store with the ability to wishlist the game.
The post Sony sues Tencent over Horizon Zero Dawn ‘rip-off’ appeared first on Polygon.
