Don’t mess with the money: Sony sues Tencent over brazen Horizon rip off

Honey, the multi-billion-dollar companies are fighting again. Sony is suing Tencent, the massive Chinese company with investments everywhere, over its “slavish” rip-off of PlayStation’s Horizon series.

Light of Motiram was announced last year, coming from Tencent studio Polaris Quest. If you’ve browsed the newly released games on Steam for any chunk of time, you’ll recognise what it’s trying to do immediately. Not only is it piggybacking off of Horizon, but it’s also a survival and crafting game. Unique, I know. 

It appears that what has Sony calling their high-priced lawyers over is things like the robot creatures, themes, and the aesthetics. Here’s what the PlayStation company had to say in the lawsuit (as reported by IGN):

“The commonalities with Horizon disclosed in the Light of Motiram promotional game trailer and other promotional materials included not only identical story and gameplay themes, cultural, and character elements, but also art style, landscapes, architectural and art elements, color palettes, fonts, and symbols. Lighting and points of view are also highly similar.”

Sony’s lawsuit also names multiple outlets that have egged on the knock-off claims, citing the public court of opinion in its lawsuit. Amongst the complaints, it says that the game features far too similar gameplay aspects. It also claims that Tencent approached them in 2024 to use the Horizon license, which they declined.

So if Sony wasn’t going to play ball, I guess Tencent just allowed Polaris to march forward with Light of Motiram. Now, obviously, I’m not a lawyer, but I can see how Sony would take offence at Light of Motiram.

Light of Motiram is riding that razor-thin line

Big robot dinosaurs, that early man or tribal aesthetic being leveraged to emphasise the struggles you’ll come across. There’s even a bow and arrow weapon. Even the user interface is clearly heavily inspired, as politely as that can be put. However, looking at more recent gameplay videos from closed beta tests out of China, there’s some potential legal wiggle room. As I mentioned above, the game is clearly closer to something akin to the flood of survival-crafting games that litter most storefronts these days.

It’s certainly pulling stuff out of Horizon, there’s no denying it, but the games are quite different in scope. There’s no sense of that dynamic combat when pitted against a giant, lumbering robot dinosaur in Motiram, when compared to Horizon. It’s another semi-stiff-looking crafting game with combat that, in some aspects, looks like it’d feel closer to Monster Hunter. It’s just filled to the gills with Horizon-looking elements.

There are like two online Horizon projects still in the works

Though there’s reason to believe that Sony has a vested interest in keeping anything like Light of Motiram from surfacing in its current state. Guerrilla Games, the studio behind Horizon, is reportedly still in development with its online entry in the series. A rumored MMO being developed by South Korean studio, NCSoft, was allegedly killed off back in January, but there’s some mild confusion over whether or not it was. Something called Project H was apparently cancelled, but this wasn’t the Horizon MMO.

Should Light of Motiram ever see the light of day once this lawsuit gets underway, it’ll be coming to PC and mobile.

The Escapist has reached out for comment.