The legal battle between Sony and Tencent regarding the similarities between the former’s Horizon franchise and the latter’s Light of Motiram has come to an end with the two companies having reached a settlement. As caught by The Game Post, a recent filing for the lawsuit had both companies jointly asking the court to dismiss the case since they have signed an agreement.
While details about this settlement are confidential, the court has dismissed the case with prejudice, which means that Sony can’t pursue a lawsuit for similar reasons again. Check out the full court statement below.
“Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure and the confidential settlement of all parties, Plaintiff Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC and Defendants Tencent America LLC, Proxima Beta U.S. LLC, Tencent Holdings Ltd., Proxima Beta PTE Ltd., and Tencent Technology (Shanghai) Company Ltd., by and through their undersigned counsel of record, hereby stipulate as follows:
“All pending motions are withdrawn and this action is hereby dismissed with prejudice. All parties shall bear their own fees and costs.”
While most details about the settlement are unknown, it looks like one of the conditions was removing Light of Motiram from storefronts. This has happened, with the game not having a store page on Steam or Epic Games Store.
Sony had first filed the lawsuit all the way back in July, having accused Tencent of stealing ideas from the Horizon franchise. In its initial lawsuit, Sony referred to Light of Motiram as being a “slavish clone” of the Guerrilla-developed open-world titles Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West, at least in terms of visuals. As a part of its filing, Sony was seeking monetary damages up to an unspecified amount, along with a court order that would block Tencent from violating the Horizon IP.
Tencent responded with its own statement, calling Sony’s lawsuit “improper attempt to fence off” pop culture. The company alleged that Sony was not interested in “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,” said Tencent in a statement.. “In Sony’s telling, Horizon Zero Dawn is ‘like no fictional world created before [or] since.’” Tencent calls this claim “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.”
The company noted that Sony’s basis for the lawsuit was superficial, and went on to name several other games that featured similar aesthetics, including The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Biomutant, and Outer Wilds, among others.
Sony would fire back in October by calling Tencent’s statement “nonsense” in a 42-page statement. The PlayStation maker said that “The damage is done—and it continues. SIE has already suffered injury by Tencent promoting its knock-off game, as made clear by the many instances of actual consumer confusion documented in the Complaint that Tencent does not—and cannot—challenge in its motion. The Court can redress past, ongoing, and imminent infringement.”
