Tencent

Tencent defends Light of Motiram against Sony’s Horizon lawsuit: ‘That claim is startling’

The company calls the claims an attempt to monopolize genre tropes as it defends its upcoming game Light of Motiram.

Update: Sep 18th, 2025 22:25 CEST

At the end of last year, Tencent surprised everyone with the announcement of its upcoming survival title, Light of Motiram. The art style of this title was very reminiscent of Sony and Guerrilla Games’ Horizon franchise, with a very similar aesthetic in terms of characters, colors, enemies, and other details. In July of this year, Sony filed a lawsuit in California federal court alleging copyright and trademark infringement.

As the months have passed, it is now Tencent’s turn to refute Sony’s lawsuit. According to a report by TheGamePost, Tencent has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that Sony. The Chinese company has argued that Sony 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.”

Tencent defends itself against Sony’s accusations

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

Tencent also alleges that Sony already knew Horizon wasn’t an original idea when it was in development. The Chinese giant cites a documentary in which Horizon Zero Dawn art director Jan-Bart van Beek reportedly states that concerns arose during planning that the game was too similar to Bandai Namco‘s 2013 game, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. “Sony shelved the project, only to revive it later with full awareness that the idea was far from novel,” Tencent claims. “When Horizon Zero Dawn finally launched in 2017, the gaming community noted its striking resemblance to Enslaved and other genre staples.”

Light of Motiram is developed by Polaris Quest, a subsidiary of Tencent. And since the game will not be released until 2027, Tencent has also argued that this lawsuit is based on hypotheticals, since “The alleged infringements have not occurred and may in fact never occur.”