The Horizon franchise is one of Sony's best, both in terms of sales and quality. It's so good, in fact, that Tencent decided to liberally take a few pages out of its book, but overdid it a little, leading Sony to file a formal copyright lawsuit.
Now, however, Tencent's Horizon clone, called Light of Motiram, has been refurbished with new looks and content to differentiate it from Sony's IP. Any and all content resembling Horizon's assets, story, characters, or otherwise has been removed from promotional materials, including the game's Steam page. Additionally, its release date has been pushed back significantly, with Light of Motiram now slated for release in the fourth quarter of 2027.
All this came as a result of Sony's vehement and angry lawsuit, where the company alleged Tencent significantly infringed on its Horizon IP by copying its content, art style, characters, story, and world, among other things. Sony notoriously did not spare words when speaking of Light of Motiram, which it called a “shameless... slavish clone,” and even cited its own fans who dubbed Motiram as “Horizon Zero Originality,” per Reuters.
The snarky lawsuit seems to have put enough pressure on Tencent, forcing the company to delay its game and remove anything that could be viewed as a “copy” of Horizon. And, from what I saw prior to Light of Motiram's updated promotional material, there was quite a lot of it. At first glance, you couldn't even tell if you were looking at an entirely new game or just another screenshot from the Horizon titles, and it only makes sense that Sony decided to do something about it.
What the epilogue of the lawsuit will be now that Motiram's been remedied is anyone's guess, but I don't think these changes will be enough to satisfy a very disgruntled Sony.
The post ‘Shameless,’ ‘slavish,’ and unoriginal: Sony’s snark-filled lawsuit forced Tencent to backtrack on its Horizon clone appeared first on Destructoid.
