Sony sues Tencent over Light of Motiram calling it a "slavish clone" of the Horizon Zero Dawn series

Considering Guerrilla outsourced a lot of their work on Horizon, including the design for the iconic Thunderjaw monster to Chinese sweatshops, I say this is fair .


Last edited by Pyrate on 29 Jul 2025 at 3:29 pm UTC

Sony is fortunate that this is such a slam dunk rip-off that it should win, otherwise Tencent would crush Sony in court as they are a far larger company. lol

IF Sony win, it will be bad for video-gaming. Its not a clone/copy of Horizon. It sure as hell looks similar and has a similar vibe, as does Horizon to Assassin's Creed games. As does Star Wars to Dune, as does all arcade racing games to Outrun. I dislike corpo crap at the best of times. But when I see a Company like Sony that routinely rips off other games (and steals art assets), I get a little fed up. I present my evidence as Astro-Bot - which is a Mario Clone. If Sony want to start throwing their corpo-crap around, they better get ready for a whirlwind - Nintendo could make an awful lot of trouble for Sony in the courts, as could SEGA - and in Japan they take copyright law to the next level.

I suspect that if Tencent lose the case, they will just release in BRICS countries instead. I think the market in India and China would exceed anything in the US anyway. Bear in mind that whilst the US has a large market for video games, compared to the RotW - its only about 1/3 and reducing every day. China's Economy is still growing at 5% India at 6%, the USA at only 2.8%, and European nations (inc. UK) are relatively stagnant at about 1%. Which means more and more Indian and Chinese consumers will have enough disposable income and free time to buy systems and games.

The only people who will really lose in these cases, are US/Western gaming consumers. I personally can see enough differences between the two games, as to throw out the case anyway. And I say that as someone who really enjoyed the Horizon games.

As a footnote.. RUSSIA is growing at 4.3% - those sanctions are really working aren't they?

You cannot copyright a style. If the new game is a co-op survival game and the old game is a single-player action role-playing game then the new game isn't a clone or copy. Otherwise you may as well say that Company of Heroes is a clone/copy of Medal of Honour.

Sony is fortunate that this is such a slam dunk rip-off that it should win, otherwise Tencent would crush Sony in court as they are a far larger company. lol

They seem to be on par (85/90 billion dollars sales volume). Plus, I don't think being say twice as big would make a difference. There's only so much money you can spend on lawyers.

ehhhh, sorry @wolfgang but I disagree. This ABSOLUTELY is a direct copy/clone. I can look at some screenshots and videos and I don't think I could even tell you which game they came from. Even down to the stances the characters take during actions. It's blatant.

I don't think it'll matter in the end though, because yeah, Sony will win (as it should) but that won't mean shit in China so it'll keep selling there.

> representatives from Tencent (a claim from Sony) did actually approach them to discuss licensing the Horizon franchise in March 2024 at GDC

That's actually very nice of them, and, dare I say, not entirely expected from a Chinese company. Too bad that they continued with their project despite not getting the licence.

Intellectual property theft is standard business practice for Chinese companies.