A 'slavish clone': Sony is suing Tencent over a game that looks startlingly similar to Horizon Zero Dawn
Apparently Sony had the same reaction as the rest of us when Tencent announced a game that looks shockingly similar to Horizon Zero Dawn. It's suing the Chinese tech company over the open world game, which like Horizon is set in a lush post-apocalypse and stars a woman with a bow who fights and tames animals made of metal.
In the lawsuit, Sony calls Tencent's Light of Motiram a "slavish clone" of the Horizon series that copies its entire aesthetic, story, themes, and gameplay in a way that could confuse consumers. Sony is asking for an unspecified amount of monetary damages and an order that prevents Tencent from infringing on its IP rights.
Weirdly enough, Sony actually promoted a trailer for the game last year on the PlayStation China Weibo account. The PlayStation 5, along with Steam, is one of several platforms Light of Motiram is set to appear on.
Notably, Sony is suing over copyright infringement rather than patent infringement, like Nintendo did when it sued Pocketpair last year. That suggests it's pretty confident in how egregious the similarities between the two games are. And I'm not surprised: If you squint at this trailer from two weeks ago, it really does just look like Horizon Zero Dawn with a different girl.
The Steam page describes Light of Motiram as an open world action game set in "a world overrun by colossal machines" where you train and fight "Mechanimals". I don't know about you, but that sure sounds like the description on the Horizon Zero Dawn Steam page that describes it as an open world action game set on a "future Earth ruled by machines." That alone isn't enough for copyright infringement, but some of the visual similarities are remarkable, especially the look of the mechanical beasts.
In the complaint, Sony mentions that Tencent pitched a similar game set in the Horizon universe last year. "At no time during this meeting did Tencent disclose that it was already working on a game that was based on the Horizon IP assets," it said. Sony rejected the pitch, but believes this is evidence that Tencent is intentionally violating its IP rights.
It'll be interesting to see how this goes for Sony given how common it is for clones of popular games to show up everywhere. Vampire Survivors, for example, was inspired by an Android mobile game called Magic Survival, and it got its gothic horror aesthetic from an asset pack inspired by Castlevania. Instead of suing the developer, Konami partnered with them to make official Castlevania DLC.
A lot changes when it's a massive tech company ripping off another massive tech company though, so it's possible Light of Motiram won't see the light of day, at least in its current form.