Nintendo makes headlines for a number of reasons. The popularity of the Switch 2, the omnipresence of Pokémon, new announcements for the franchise, and the legal department. That last one because the company is known for being aggressive for going after copyright and patent violations. “Palworld” and it’s alleged similarities to Pokémon comes to mind.
Nintendo isn’t the only company to resort to litigation, because Sony has filed a lawsuit against Chinese gaming giant Tencent for alleged similarities to their “Horizon” games.
Tencent is a huge company, to put it gently. Not only are they their own entity, but they also have investments in other game companies including FromSoftware, Remedy, Blooper Team, Epic Games, and Ubisoft just to name a few. Sony is a gaming and technology juggernaut unto themselves; producing PlayStation and first party series like “God of War,” “Gran Turismo,” and “Horizon.” It’s the latter of those three that has become the subject of their lawsuit. More specifically, claiming Tencent’s “Light of Motiram” is ripping off “Horizon: Zero Dawn” and its sequel “Horizon: Forbidden West.”
Unlike the situation with “Palworld” vs “Pokémon” targeting gameplay mechanics, “Light of Motiram” hasn’t been released yet, so we can’t actually know how similar the games are. Sony is going after the game for its appearance, and seemingly similar plot elements, to which there seems to be quite a lot. Both games take place in worlds that have tribal elements of humanity fighting against robotic dinosaurs. They both star a red-headed female protagonist, they both use similar pieces of advanced tech to help them understand the world around them, and the open worlds have similar environments to explore.
The big question is whether or not this rises to the level of violating intellectual property. There are certain things about games that can and can’t be claimed, going back to the 1994 case of Capcom U.S.A. Inc. v Data East Corp. Capcom felt that the Data East game, “Fighter’s History” was a rip-off of “Street Fighter II.” To be fair, it was, but the judge ruled that the similarities were generic enough to where Capcom couldn’t claim it was derivative. For example, Capcom couldn’t lay claim to having a Japanese karate master who throws fireballs. Nor could Capcom own something like doing a quarter circle from down to forward (the Hadoken input) to do a special move.
Here, in “Light of Motiram” vs “Horizon,” it’s incredibly apparent that the developers took intense inspiration from the Sony franchise. You can’t look at the two games and deny that at all. But do robot dinosaurs, jungle biomes, redhead protagonists, and the like, add up to an intellectual property rights violation? Separately, not at all. If you add them all together though, it’s possible. There’s also the allegation that Tencent started developing their title with the hope of getting a license from Sony to officially make it a Horizon title. Then, when Sony denied the licensing agreement, they continued with it anyway.
We’ll continue to see how the lawsuit progresses and provide updates as the proceedings continue.
