Tencent have hit out at Sony over an ongoing copyright dispute lawsuit, claiming that Sony themselves have copied the Legend of Zelda series.
The lawsuit concerns Tencent’s Light of Motiram, which Sony claim is a “slavish clone” of Horizon Zero Dawn. In response, Tencent have simply stated that the game simply relies on several well-established tropes which cannot be copyrighted.
Tencent Accuses Sony of Seeking a Monopoly
While game mechanics cannot be copyrighted, other intellectual property such as characters and settings can be, which is the focus of the lawsuit.
In the legal filing, Tencent stated: “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 also drew on previous comments by Guerilla Games developers that they themselves feared Horizon itself was too similar to Ninja Theory’s Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.
Tencent Changes Light of Motiram Steam Page
While Tencent have been bullish in their legal filings, their actions elsewhere may show signs of the company backpedalling.
Several screenshots which depicted scenes that most closely resembled the Horizon series, including that of the protagonist battling robotic dinosaurs, have been removed from the Steam page.
Whether they’ll return, or whether Tencent will change elements of their game to distance themselves from Horizon, remains to be seen. Either way, it’s an odd look to be adamantly defending your design choices in court while altering them on Steam.
