Tencent says it’s not ripping off Horizon Zero Dawn, calls it derivative

In July, Sony filed a lawsuit against Tencent over Light of Motiram, an upcoming open-world action game that the PlayStation maker called a “rip-off” of its own post-post-apocalyptic franchise. Tencent quickly moved to change Light of Motiram‘s public marketing materials so the assets couldn’t be as easily compared to Horizon Zero Dawn, but now the Chinese mega-corp has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit as a whole.

Tencent calls the lawsuit “startling,” saying that Sony is being overly defensive about game features that are commonly found in popular video games.

To highlight its point, Tencent pulls out a quote from Sony where the publisher claims that Horizon Zero Dawn is “like no fictional world created before [or] since.” Tencent argues that Horizon Zero Dawn itself is a derivative game when you consider the “the long history of video games featuring the same elements that Sony seeks to monopolize through this lawsuit.” Tencent also points to a behind-the-scenes documentary where Horizon Zero Dawn‘s art director compares the game to Enslaved: Odyssey to the West while expressing worry that the two concepts were too similar.

Here’s Tencent’s take, from a recent court filing:

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.

Tencent argues that Sony’s claims are speculative, based on what it assumes the unreleased Light of Motiram will be like. Given that Motiram‘s release date is still two years away, the end product could be quite different from what Sony alleges it will be.

Hilariously, Tencent also says that Sony is vaguely blaming “Tencent” for infringing on its IP, a classification which technically includes five different entities. There’s a holding company based in China, and two different LLCs based out of Palo Alto, for example. Tencent is basically saying that Sony doesn’t even know who is doing the infringing, although it’s worth noting that confusing company offshoots are sometimes made to account for situations like this one. If a smaller LLC ever gets in legal trouble, the main entity doesn’t have to suffer the consequences, theoretically speaking. This is also how Tencent argues that the fact Sony being pitched a Horizon Zero Dawn spinoff by Tencent does not, necessarily, reflect something nefarious. The people making Light of Motiram may not be the same people who wanted to make the Horizon game, except Tencent also doesn’t clarify who did what. It only notes that Sony believes it was in a meeting with Tencent executives, but that no Tencent Holdings executives were present.

Really, the motion is full of technicalities like this. For instance, Tencent says that even if Holdings executives were present, what was being proposed was not Light of Motiram specifically but rather a mobile video game.

“At any rate, Tencent Holdings is not the developer or publisher of Light of Motiram,” the filing reads. “That Tencent Holdings applied to register the LIGHT OF MOTIRAM trademark does not suggest otherwise … the vast majority of overseas trademarks in the Tencent portfolio are registered by Tencent Holdings for trademark management purposes, not because Tencent Holdings is the entity that will develop, publish, create marketing materials for, or beta test the game.”

Tencent says that Sony wants to make a case that Aloy’s trademark as a character is being infringed, but that the argument is flimsy when you consider that Aloy’s appearance can vary depending on what the player equips. Bizarrely, Tencent also argues that Sony cannot make a case that Aloy is a “source-identifying brand” for the franchise, meaning that Aloy functions as a shorthand for the series as a whole. To prove this, Tencent includes a screenshot where Aloy looks out into the distance toward a dinosaur; since Aloy isn’t the focus of that particular screenshot, then Sony can’t say Aloy is the “cardinal” brand element.

In some ways, what Tencent is saying is supported by examples provided in the filing. Reviews of the original Horizon Zero Dawn sometimes say that the game, while solid, is also derivative. Some of the elements present in Light of Motiram have less to do with Horizon Zero Dawn than they do what’s popular in AAA video games, which is how you get an action game with crafting elements and base-building. But the dismissal also veers into absurdity when it tries to argue that Aloy really isn’t that central to the Horizon Zero Dawn brand. All we can do is wait and see what the courts decide.