Submitted 18 hours ago by simple@piefed.social to games@lemmy.world
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-sues-tencent-over-horizon-lookalike/1100-6533493/
Sony Interactive Entertainment has filed a lawsuit against Tencent over its upcoming game Light of Motiram, with Sony saying it is a "slavish clone" of the Horizon series.
Sony aren't kidding, that trailer literally looks like Horizon down to the small details. It's not even funny.
It’s actually very funny.
It even has the red grass to hide in.
Seriously, it looks like they took a slightly different build of the game and pasted a new face on Aloy, amd added a few animals. Doesn’t the last one even have hanggliding?
It’s not a hang glider exactly but like an energy field parachute thing, but yes slow falling is a mechanic they introduced in the second one
Wadya expect from China?
It does look like a clone, but fuck IP law. Sony winning this will only hurt games because any publisher with a genre creating / defining game could gatekeep any competitors from coming in *cough Nintendo.
The original horizon came out 8 years ago, that’s plenty of time for them to cash in on the monopoly they get for all the creativity that went into creating the genre / style.
Its not like they’re marketing it with a similar name or main character or any other identifier that could trick someone into buying it instead either.
Horizon: Temu Dawn
Horizon: Forbidden Wish.com
I went to the game’s website to see how they portrayed the game as opposed to taking whatever cherry-picked similarities Sony chose to use as their argument.
Wow. It is fucking identical. Maybe the gameplay is different, but the art is indistinguishable.
Yeah I don’t have the greatest love for Sony but they have a really good point with this.
It’s basically the same game; Robot animals have taken over the world, because reasons, Humans survive in small groups and have reverted to some kind of native american inspired spirituality for some reason, you play as hyper athletic female warrior type who has to fight said robot animal things, your mission is to acquire some long lost secret technology from before the world was taken over by animals.
The hit of gameplay in trailer looks like a near copy of monster hunter games to me.
Horizon is such wasted potential. 2 games in 8 years, and a LEGO spinoff. Where is Horizon 3? Where is Horizon Warriors? Where is the Horizon RPG?
They’re not robot dinosaurs, they’re legally distinct robot mammals.
SIE further alleged that Tencent came to the company with a pitch to license the Horizon IP, to which SIE declined.
If sony has physical proof of this, Tencent is fucked and this game will never be released
Yeah this seems like a smoking gun of intent to reproduce the IP. Hard to claim it was done in ignorance if Sony has documentation on this licencisng pitch.
A Chinese company doing what Chinese companies do best. I fully expect this game to be released and it will take a bite out of Horizons sales numbers.
A Chinese company doing what Chinese companies do best.
“The word ‘copyright infringement’ doesn’t translate very well into mandarin”
it will take a bite out of Horizons sales numbers.
Press X to doubt
With the focus on PC and Mobile in China, the big console franchises don’t strike me as super popular over there (based on nothing but feelings).
A game does not sell just because of art or the IP. So I like that there is competition. Would suck for Sony if the copy had better code quality, a better story, more content than their games at half the price.
Counterpoint: the janky-ass Pokémon games that suck and still print money.
Same for Assassin’s Creed, Black Ops, etc. It does not mean they get bought because they are good. It means there is nothing else to play. For Pokémon there is actually a good example how to create this healthy competition - it is called Palworld.
I think it’s proven fact that things often sell off of the art and IP, sometimes for those alone. If that wasn’t the case they wouldn’t fight so hard to protect it.
Oh they obviously make more money out of those IP than they invest. And some IP’s are rather good. However, suing competition also means the market is so small, it is worth fighting them on the legal path, which actually proves my point.
Yeah, I gotta go with Sony on this and holy shit that is horizon dawn all the way!
Same:
Different:
I low key would want to play through this in an any% kind of way. Just to see if it’s fun. But the battle sequences did not sell this well, I have to say.
Good luck to all.
Do they have a case? As long as Tencent isn’t actively copying Horizon beyond an aesthetic, are they infringing on anything?
The key is whether or not someone would confuse one franchise for another based on the aesthetics. People were losing their minds over Palworld being a ripoff of Pokemon when it first released.
I could see it going either way. IP law is a mess.
There is the additional case that apparently $0.10 wants to licence the IP. (Autocorrect has just changed the name to a price, and I’m inclined to leave it because it’s funny)
It sounds like what happened here is they developed the game and then approached Sony for the licence assuming they were going to get it (which is a bizarre thing to do because Sony were never going to give them a licence, anyone who knows anything about how Sony operate knows that)
Uhh the game looks awesome from what the trailer shows. I want to play it, and I’m already hyped for it. The combat also looks better than what it was in Horizon 1.
I honestly don’t care if they just copy games like this. I’m too tired of awesome concepts & IPs being completely misused & wasted by game publishers.
I’m hoping Tencent wins this one, because I wanna play the game. If they do win, I bet “Monster Hunter x Horizon + conventionally attractive characters” would sell like hotcakes.
There’s got to be irony somewhere in Sony striking a deal with Palworld, then suing another company for copying the art of their game.
Is the art of Palworld similar to Pokémon?
There are some monster designs that are very similar to Pokemon, but FWIW Pokemon has a lot of simple designs inspired by real animals anyway.
Yessss pls damage each other
Heh, remember when everyone was playing Breath of the Wild aka Genshin Impact?
imagine spending all that dev time to just get shredded. bruh
and a nolan north style ghost to boot
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 17 hours ago
This seems very relevant to the lawsuit.
What did they do, decide to develop a Horizon game in-house, then ask for permission retroactively, and then release it anyway when Sony didn’t agree?
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 1 hour ago
Doom started out as an Aliens game. Though they pivoted away from that to retain more creative freedom.
TheBeege@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Starcraft is Warhammer 40k. Terrans are space marines. Protoss are Eldar. Zerg are Tyranids. Been happening a long time now
thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 13 hours ago
Not as relevant as you would think, and actually somewhat common in the industry; Warcraft (the RTS) was developed ahead of asking for a license for the Warhammer franchise. When that deal fell through, it was rejigged to be its own thing and published.
echodot@feddit.uk 3 hours ago
I think the key here is that it’s completely identical. It’s virtually the same product if you told me it was another game set in the same universe I would have believed you.
When you rejig something you have to change it enough that it’s distinct, I’m not convinced they changed literally anything.
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 hours ago
That sounds like exactly what they dod
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 hours ago
Would not be the first time, although usually developers then go out of their way to make things more legally distinct.
Off the top of my head, the PS1 game Croc was reportedly originally pitched to Nintendo as a 3D platformer starring Yoshi (it was made by some of the team behind StarFox). They obviously reworked it a ton before it released as what it ended up as.