Tencent fires back at Sony’s Horizon lawsuit, saying the claims are “startling” and an attempt to “fence off a well-trodden corner of popular culture,” while arguing Light of Motiram just uses “time-honored” genre tropes.
Back in July, Sony filed a lawsuit against Tencent in California. Sony argued that Tencent’s upcoming game Light of Motiram was essentially a carbon copy of the Horizon series, pointing to a red-haired heroine (Alloy in Horizon games), robotic wildlife, and post-apocalyptic landscapes as evidence that it was a “slavish clone.” That complaint, filed July 25, 2025, framed the game as an unlawful attempt to piggyback off the massive success of Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West.
Now, Tencent has filed its response. Earlier today, the Chinese tech giant filed the motion to dismiss (seen by The Game Post), and the company pushed back hard, calling Sony’s lawsuit an overreach. Tencent argues that Sony isn’t really trying to protect unique creative work; it’s trying to monopolize entire storytelling conventions that dozens of other games have been using for years.
The company is asking the court to throw the case out entirely, citing lack of jurisdiction, failure to state a claim, and the fact that Light of Motiram won’t even release until late 2027.
Tencent Says Sony is Trying to Transform “Ubiquitous Genre Ingredients into Proprietary Assets”
Tencent’s filing doesn’t tiptoe around its point. In plain terms, the company says Sony is trying to lock down ideas and imagery that have been part of gaming for decades: the red-haired heroes, ruined civilizations, and mechanical monsters. According to Tencent, Sony wants the court to hand them exclusive rights to things that pop up in everything from The Legend of Zelda, Far Cry, Outer Wilds, to Enslaved, Biomutant, and more.
“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,” the complaint reads.
“At bottom, Sony’s effort is not aimed at fighting off piracy, plagiarism, or any genuine threat to intellectual property. It is an improper attempt to fence off a well-trodden corner of popular culture and declare it Sony’s exclusive domain.”
Tencent also called Sony’s central claim, that Horizon Zero Dawn was “like no fictional world created before [or] since”–“startling” and “flatly contradicted” by Sony’s own developers. “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 argues that Sony is conveniently leaving out key context. In its view, the elements Sony is complaining about aren’t unique ideas owned by any one company. Tencent says these are widely used concepts found across dozens of other games, and Sony is simply trying to claim them as their own.
“Sony’s Complaint tellingly ignores these facts. Instead, it tries to transform ubiquitous genre ingredients into proprietary assets,” Tencent alleges in the complaint. “By suing over an unreleased project that merely employs the same time-honored tropes embraced by scores of other games released both before and after Horizon—like Enslaved, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Far Cry: Primal, Far Cry: New Dawn, Outer Wilds, Biomutant, and many more—Sony seeks an impermissible monopoly on genre conventions.”
According to Tencent, even Sony’s own developers didn’t think the Horizon concept was all that original when it was first pitched. The company points to a behind-the-scenes documentary where Horizon Zero Dawn’s own art director, Jan-Bart Van Beek, admitted that the game’s central premise, an adventurous red-haired woman surviving in a world overtaken by machines, had already been done before
Specifically, he compared it to Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, a 2013 game with similar themes and visuals. At the time, Van Beek even warned that the project felt too close, saying, “I don’t think we should do this; it touches too much of these other points.” Sony originally shelved the idea for that reason, Tencent says, but later brought it back knowing full well that it wasn’t unique.
“Long before this lawsuit was filed, the developers of Horizon Zero Dawn publicly acknowledged that the very same game elements that, today, Sony claims to own exclusively, were in fact borrowed from an earlier game,” the complaint reads.
“In a behind-the-scenes documentary, the art director for Horizon Zero Dawn, Jan-Bart Van Beek, explained that the game’s core conceit—an intrepid, red haired woman navigating the ruins of a shattered civilization overrun by robotic beasts—had already been executed by a different video game studio in the 2013 title Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.
“Mr. Van Beek warned, “I don’t think we should do this; it touches too much of these other points,” referring to prominent elements of Enslaved. Sony shelved the project—only to revive it later with full awareness that the idea was far from novel. When Horizon Zero Dawn finally launched in 2017, the gaming community noted its striking resemblance to Enslaved and other genre staples.”
Tencent also addresses the bit in Sony’s complaint about a meeting at GDC in San Francisco back in March 2024, where Tencent representatives pitched a licensed Horizon mobile game that Sony later turned down.
Tencent says that while some of its subsidiaries (but not Tencent Holdings, the parent company) were present, there was no agreement on licensing terms, nor was any infringing material shown or shared.
“No Tencent Holdings executives or employees were at this meeting,” the complaint reads. “But even if the pitch meeting between Sony and other Tencent entities could somehow be attributed to Tencent Holdings, Sony has failed to make a prima facie showing that any actions at this meeting caused harm to Sony.”
“Nothing that occurred at the San Francisco meeting—i.e., a request to a ‘license in the Horizon intellectual property’—is alleged to be an act of copyright or trademark infringement.”
No Clear Acts by Tencent’s U.S. Entities
Beyond creative criticism, Tencent is also trying to get the lawsuit thrown out for purely legal reasons.
First, Tencent says that one of the major flaws in Sony’s lawsuit is that it sued the wrong entities (Tencent America, Proxima Beta U.S., and Tencent Holdings), or at least, not the ones actually developing or publishing Light of Motiram. “None of the served defendants develop and market the Light of Motiram video game that Sony alleges infringes its intellectual property in the Horizon franchise.”
According to the motion to dismiss, Light of Motiram is being developed and published by two other Tencent-affiliated companies: Polaris Quest / Aurora Studios, a Chinese game development team operating under Tencent Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, and Proxima Beta PTE Ltd., a Singapore-based company “doing business as ‘Tencent Games’ and/or ‘Level Infinite’.”
Tencent goes on to explain that one of the main defendants, Tencent Holdings Ltd., is just a parent company, a holding entity incorporated in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Shenzhen, China. It doesn’t actually make games, run marketing, or control the day-to-day operations of the studios.
Tencent accuses Sony of trying to fast-track its legal attack by dragging in whoever it could find, even if those companies had no real connection to the parts of Light of Motiram Sony is upset about.
“Sony’s threadbare, conclusory allegations improperly lump these Defendants together with the foreign companies alleged to be responsible for the core conduct at issue. Sony’s vague allegations against ‘Tencent’ or ‘Defendants’ generally cannot substantiate the claims it brings against Tencent America, Proxima Beta U.S., or Tencent Holdings specifically.”
One of Tencent’s strongest arguments is timing. Light of Motiram doesn’t even have a release until the end of 2027. Tencent says the lawsuit is built on hypotheticals: what the game “might” look like, or what the U.S. companies “might” do. Tencent says, “The alleged infringements have not occurred and may in fact never occur.”
All of this comes after Tencent’s development arm, Polaris Quest, quietly scrubbed Light of Motiram’s Steam page in August. The Game Post reported that the screenshots and descriptions that once showed off giant mechanical creatures and Horizon-style tribal tech were changed.
The red-haired protagonist image was replaced with generic companion creatures, and the game’s description was rewritten to focus on survival elements. A release window was also added: Q4 2027.
What do you think? Should the lawsuit be dismissed? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
