Tencent's Horizon clone Light of Motiram pulled from Steam and Epic after Sony lawsuit ends

The lawsuit has been settled

by · TechSpot

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What just happened? The legal battle between Sony and Tencent over Horizon clone Light of Motiram is over – and it appears that Sony won. The companies have reached a "confidential settlement" and the case has been dismissed with prejudice. Moreover, the game has now been removed from the Steam and Epic Games stores.

Sean Durkin, head of communications for Tencent Americas, told The Verge that Sony and Tencent have reached a confidential resolution and will make no further public comment on the matter.

It appears that there are no hard feelings over the lawsuit – at least from Tencent. Durkin said the two companies look forward to working together in the future. Sony never replied to a request for comment.

While the details of the settlement have not been revealed, it does appear that Light of Motiram won't ever see the light of day.

Motiram's listings on both Steam and Epic have been removed. The game's website is still up, but the link to wishlist it on Steam directs to the platform's main page. There's nothing on the official X account, either – the last post was in March.

The Light of Motiram trailer excited a lot of people when it first arrived in November 2024, mostly because they assumed it was a sequel, spinoff, or DLC related to the Horizon series.

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Despite the near identical looks, style, graphics, gameplay, mechanics, story, protagonist, etc., Motiram wasn't part of the Horizon franchise and had nothing to do with it. In an entirely unsurprising move, Sony sued Tencent over the "slavish clone" a few months later.

Tencent was unrelenting in its response. The Chinese giant argued that Sony was trying to claim a monopoly on a specific genre, Horizon Zero Dawn wasn't original, and there was a lack of jurisdiction over China's Tencent Holdings – the parent company of the developer, which had not been served.

Sony then said that Tencent was playing a "shell game" to avoid liability, and that the damage to the Horizon brand has already been done. Sony also called Tencent's defense "nonsense."

The suit revealed that Tencent had pitched a mobile game set in the Horizon universe to Sony at the 2024 Game Developers Conference, but it failed to mention that it started developing Light of Motiram in 2023. Sony rejected the idea, yet Tencent continued developing its imitator.

The case was set to go to court in January. It seems that Tencent realized what everyone else was thinking: it had very little chance of winning.