Tencent rejects Sony’s claim that Light of Motiram is a “slavish clone” of Horizon

• Tencent calls Sony’s copyright allegations “startling” and outside its exclusive control.
• Court papers note Horizon’s art director admitted the game’s premise wasn’t original.
• Tencent cites Enslaved, Zelda, and Far Cry as examples of similar genre tropes.
• Sony sued in July to block Light of Motiram’s release, alleging that Aloy was copied.

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Tencent has rejected Sony’s allegation that its upcoming game Light of Motiram is a “slavish clone” of the Horizon series. 

As reported by The Game Post, the PUBG publisher argued that Sony is not protecting genuine intellectual property but rather trying to claim common genre elements as proprietary.

Tencent said Light of Motiram relies on “time-honoured” tropes beyond Sony’s control, dismissing Sony’s copyright claims as “startling.”

“Plaintiff Sony has sued a grab-bag of Tencent companies – and ten unnamed defendants – about the unreleased video game Light of Motiram, alleging that the game copies elements from Sony’s game Horizon Zero Dawn and its spinoffs,” said Tencent’s lawyers.

“At bottom, Sony’s effort is not aimed at fighting off piracy, plagiarism, or any genuine threat to intellectual property. It is an improper attempt to fence off a well-trodden corner of popular culture and declare it Sony’s exclusive domain.”

Sony blunder? 

Court filings noted that Horizon Zero Dawn art director Jan-Bart Van Beek admitted in a documentary that the game’s premise wasn’t original, citing 2013’s Enslaved: Odyssey to the West as a reference.

“Long before this lawsuit was filed, the developers of Horizon Zero Dawn publicly acknowledged that the very same game elements that, today, Sony claims to own exclusively, were in fact borrowed from an earlier game,” said Tencent. 

“Sony’s Complaint tellingly ignores these facts. Instead, it tries to transform ubiquitous genre ingredients into proprietary assets. 

“By suing over an unreleased project that merely employs the same time-honored tropes embraced by scores of other games released both before and after Horizon – like Enslaved, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Far Cry: Primal, Far Cry: New Dawn, Outer Wilds, Biomutant, and many more – Sony seeks an impermissible monopoly on genre conventions.”

In July, Sony sued Tencent for copyright and trademark infringement, seeking to block the release of Light of Motiram and accusing it of copying Horizon’s lead character Aloy and misleading players into thinking it was a Horizon sequel. 

Following the lawsuit, Tencent altered the game’s Steam page and promotional art.