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.
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.
Eh this lawsuit actually sounds like it has grounds… Tencent asked to make a spinoff, got rejected, then made it anyway.
Sony states that during the pitch meeting, Tencent did not disclose it was already working on Light of Motiram. According to the lawsuit, Sony rejected Tencent’s Horizon pitch in April 2024, stating that while it “greatly appreciated Aurora’s level of passion and the effort put into the pitch,” it would not be pursuing the partnership.
When Tencent did announce Light of Motiram in November 2024, Sony states in the lawsuit that its gameplay trailer did not feature any of the “Eastern-inspired clothing, aesthetics, and backdrops that Tencent pitched and instead copied Horizon whole cloth.”
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.
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.
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.
Character design, a little thinner, more Asian game looking. People who are anime/hentai thin and are performing physical feats they shouldn’t be expected to be able to do. Less texture and detail to the faces and such. More smooth, gen AI look and feel. Less/cheaper work behind it I’m assuming.
Traveling, actually looks fun as hell compared to the Horizon games. Riding many more animals of different types and in/through different media, like water.
Fighting gameplay, looks like absolute ass, bro. Same old ground-based regurgitated melee style fighting you find in every single Chinese game with fighting in it. Looks so boring. Move in, hit, move out. Repeat until finished. I sleep.
Maybe able to clone beings you have destroyed? I dunno. Could be cool if that’s what I saw.
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.
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)
Not sure I care about who will win that one, but if Sony can prove tenc $0.10 actually came to them to get a Horizon licence, only to release “can’t believe it’s not Horizon” shortly after not getting it, that would be quite the smoking gun.
It’s basically a proof that looking as similar as possible was their intention all along.
Yeah, they link to other stores without offering a native purchase or download, they don’t get indexed. Not a new rule, and a rather sensible one. The product page is still available via linking.
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.
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.
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.
Some are the designs are pretty close I will admit, even though I don’t think Nintendo should be able to randomly shut down gamea that are vaguely similar to Pokémon.
gamespot.com
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