Back in November last year, Tencent revealed a game called Light of Motiram that was almost comically obviously lifting its entire aesthetic from Sony’s Horizon game series. At the time we suggested the game was obviously a lawsuit waiting to happen, and sure enough in July this year Sony announced it was suing Tencent over the “slavish clone.” Now, it appears that case has been quietly settled behind the scenes.
As reported by The Verge, a court document reveals that the case is over, all parties are paying their own costs, and—as so often seems to be the case—the settlement is “confidential.” Which is to say, we’ll never find out what was agreed, but can draw inference from the fact that the game’s Steam page remains deleted.
At the time of the reveal, Light of Motiram was hilariously obviously knocking off Horizon Zero Dawn. Every detail of the promo shots could be mistaken for a new entry in Guerrilla Games’ series, from setting to player character to robo-animal creature design. Sony claimed in its lawsuit that the company had recently declined to collaborate with Tencent on a new Horizon game, and soon after Tencent revealed their remarkably familiar game anyway.
© Tencent
The creature designs were especially egregious, making Palworld look like a font of creativity:
© Tencent / Sony / Kotaku
A month after Sony filed, Tencent removed the store pages for Motiram from both Steam and the Epic Game Store, which didn’t look wholly innocent. Developers Polaris Quest also had previously started removing the most overt images and language, trying to portray a far more generic-looking game. This was thought at the time to perhaps be an effort to convince Sony to settle, but perhaps was laying the groundwork for Tencent’s attempt to have the case dismissed on the basis that Sony couldn’t claim a “monopoly on genre conventions” from a “well-trodden corner of popular culture.”
Jump forward to today, and it seems the two companies have agreed to stop fighting and play in their own sections of the yard. In a statement provided to The Verge, Tencent said “SIE and Tencent are pleased to have reached a confidential resolution and will have no further public comment on this matter.”
What this all means will perhaps become more clear if Light of Motiram restores its store pages or resumes updates. Its website still has links to the long-deleted Steam store page, but its various social media accounts and Discord haven’t been updated since March, notably months before Sony filed the suit.
