Last Updated on Oct 29, 2025 @ 14:43:07 PM.
In one of the more direct IP battles in recent gaming history, Tencent has formally replied to Sony’s lawsuit over Light of Motiram. It called Sony’s accusations “startling” and accused it of trying to monopolize common genre elements rather than protecting anything truly unique or original.
The story started earlier this year on July 25, 2025, when Sony Interactive Entertainment filed a lawsuit in California federal court against Tencent. Sony claimed Light of Motiram, a game by Tencent’s subsidiary Polaris Quest, was a “slavish clone” of its Horizon series.
Sony pointed to similarities like a red-haired protagonist, robotic wildlife, tribal groups, and post-apocalyptic settings. It also argued that Tencent had tried to license Horizon and possibly make a spin-off in 2024, but after Sony declined, it moved forward with its own project. After the lawsuit went public, the game’s Steam page was changed, with references to robotic animals and certain visuals being removed so as not to make it obvious.
Tencent’s Response to Sony’s Lawsuit
Tencent has now fired back with a motion to dismiss the case, rejecting Sony’s main claims. Their response argues that Sony is trying to claim ownership over basic genre conventions and game design elements rather than defending a truly original work. In the filing, Tencent made its stance clear:
“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. At bottom, Sony’s effort is not aimed at fighting off piracy, plagiarism, or any genuine threat to intellectual property.”
Tencent sharpened its tone further:
“It is an improper attempt to fence off a well-trodden corner of popular culture and declare it Sony’s exclusive domain. In Sony’s telling, Horizon Zero Dawn is ‘like no fictional world created before [or] since.’ That claim is startling, because it is flatly contradicted by Sony’s own developers, not to mention the long history of video games featuring the same elements that Sony seeks to monopolize through this lawsuit.”
Tencent also stressed that many of the features Sony listed are shared across numerous games that came out long before Horizon, from action-adventure to open-world RPGs. The company hopes the court will dismiss the complaint, claiming that Sony named the wrong defendants and that its case relies too heavily on common storytelling tropes (a lot of which are seen in Sony’s other first-party titles as well).
If the court agrees, Tencent could avoid liability. But if Sony convinces the judge that Horizon contains unique protectable elements and that Light of Motiram infringes on them, this legal fight could get messy.
As a normal gamer, it’s hard not to see the similarities between Light of Motiram and Horizon. When Motiram was first revealed, many players found the similarities way too obvious and were surprised Tencent would go ahead with something that blatantly looks like a “Horizon clone”. It would be both surprising and interesting to see the courts side with Tencent.
For more Thumb Wars coverage, read up on this feature about how important Marvel’s Wolverine is for Insomniac Games and its Marvel-focused future, or Neil Druckmann revealing more about Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
Suhaib is a Writer at Thumb Wars. Besides movies, TV, and video Games, there’s not much else that interests him. He loves narrative-driven video games that shape his psyche. His all-time favorities include Fallout: New Vegas, Disco Elysium, Bloodborne, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Red Dead Redemption 2, Persona 4, Persona 5, Mass Effect Trilogy, and The Last of Us Part 2 (which is better than the first one, actually).
