According to Sony Interactive Entertainment, Tencent’s Light of Motiram copies Guerrilla Games’ Horizon IP to an extent that Sony considers unacceptable.

Reuters reports that Sony Interactive Entertainment has filed a lawsuit against Tencent in a California federal court, alleging that Tencent copied the Horizon franchise with Light of Motiram, which was announced last November. Perhaps we also pointed out last year that the Chinese tech giant’s project bore a striking resemblance to Horizon. The lawsuit refers to Light of Motiram as a copy with the same gameplay, story themes, artistic elements, and other similarities as Horizon.

Sony Interactive Entertainment also stated in the lawsuit that it had rejected Tencent’s offer to collaborate on a new Horizon game in 2024, prior to Tencent’s announcement of Light of Motiram. According to the lawsuit, the press has called Light of Motiram a copy of Horizon; some have even called the game “Horizon Zero Originality.”

Sony Interactive Entertainment has asked the court for unspecified damages and an injunction against Tencent for infringing on its intellectual property rights. Neither Sony Interactive Entertainment nor Tencent immediately responded to Reuters’s request for comment. Despite the lawsuit, Sony Interactive Entertainment Shanghai announced on its social media channels last November that Light of Motiram would also be released on the PlayStation 5. This suggests that the company does not have a problem with the game’s similarity to the Horizon franchise. Although the posts have since been removed from Weibo and Bilibili, they have been archived on Archive.org.

The situation is therefore particularly interesting. It seems that Tencent did not let Sony’s cancellation of the collaboration go unnoticed, essentially copying Guerrilla Games’ style and incorporating it into its own game. Tencent will not be able to hide the origins of Light of Motiram.

Source: Gematsu, Reuters, Archive.org