Sony has filed a lawsuit against Tencent over the Horizon franchise.
Sony Interactive Entertainment has filed a lawsuit against Tencent over its upcoming game Light of Motiram, with Sony saying it is a “slavish clone” of the Horizon series.
Seriously, it looks like they took a slightly different build of the game, pasted a new face on Aloy, added a few animals, and literally changed nothing else at all. Like not even scanning effects. Doesn’t the last one even have hanggliding?
That’s not to say it looks bad, it could easily just play like a spin-off, but even the regions look similar.
Tbh, though, I really hate how Horizon scaled the combat difficulty with unending spamming AOE attacks.
Horizon 1 was excellent, part 2 was too much. Kinda like Jedi survivor, we went from a somewhat small game to one 10x the size. I couldn’t even finish it
I liked pretty much everything about it except that harder combat just meant spamming meteors at you, like Thanos and Iron Man. If they throw another moon at me, Im gonna lose it. It’s such damn lazy design.
Yeah this seems like a smoking gun of intent to reproduce the IP. Hard to claim it was done in ignorance if Sony has documentation on this licensing pitch.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
if they dont’t market it as something related to horizon then what’s the issue? we have millions of clones of various games with different graphics, and so what?
I went to the game’s website to see how they portrayed the game as opposed to taking whatever cherry-picked similarities Sony chose to use as their argument.
Wow. It is fucking identical. Maybe the gameplay is different, but the art is indistinguishable.
The world needs to be fleshed out so an RPG would actually be pretty good. The problem is it’s a pretty world but it isn’t really very interesting. The humans who occupy the world are frankly boring and you can only fight so many robot elk before you want to do something else.
A prequel would be interesting, detailing what happened and maybe explaining how things ended up the way they now are.
Yeah I don’t have the greatest love for Sony but they have a really good point with this.
It’s basically the same game; Robot animals have taken over the world because reasons, Humans survive in small groups and have reverted to some kind of native american inspired spirituality for some bizarre never explained reason, you play as hyper athletic female warrior type who has to fight said robot animal things, your mission is to acquire some long lost secret technology from before the world was taken over by robot animals.
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.
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.
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.
I saw the trailer for that game and laughed my ass off, i legit thought it was a horizon DLC and when I realized it wasn’t, I couldn’t get past the obvious fact that it’s a straight ripoff that barely changed anything
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don’t share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don’t want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
Horizon: Temu Dawn
Horizon: Forbidden Wish.com
Horizon: Aliexpress West
Sony aren’t kidding, that trailer literally looks like Horizon down to the small details. It’s not even funny how 1-to-1 it is.
Wadya expect from China?
It’s actually very funny.
I thought it was a horizon dlc first time i saw it
Seriously, it looks like they took a slightly different build of the game, pasted a new face on Aloy, added a few animals, and literally changed nothing else at all. Like not even scanning effects. Doesn’t the last one even have hanggliding?
That’s not to say it looks bad, it could easily just play like a spin-off, but even the regions look similar.
Tbh, though, I really hate how Horizon scaled the combat difficulty with unending spamming AOE attacks.
Horizon 1 was excellent, part 2 was too much. Kinda like Jedi survivor, we went from a somewhat small game to one 10x the size. I couldn’t even finish it
I liked pretty much everything about it except that harder combat just meant spamming meteors at you, like Thanos and Iron Man. If they throw another moon at me, Im gonna lose it. It’s such damn lazy design.
It’s not a hang glider exactly but like an energy field parachute thing, but yes slow falling is a mechanic they introduced in the second one
It even has the red grass to hide in.
and a nolan north style ghost to boot
If sony has physical proof of this, Tencent is fucked and this game will never be released
Yeah this seems like a smoking gun of intent to reproduce the IP. Hard to claim it was done in ignorance if Sony has documentation on this licensing pitch.
This seems very relevant to the lawsuit.
What did they do, decide to develop a Horizon game in-house, then ask for permission retroactively, and then release it anyway when Sony didn’t agree?
Starcraft is Warhammer 40k. Terrans are space marines. Protoss are Eldar. Zerg are Tyranids. Been happening a long time now
There is also evidence that an out of court settlement happened between those companies. Notably moving away from cerebrates in SC2.
Doom started out as an Aliens game. Though they pivoted away from that to retain more creative freedom.
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.
That sounds like exactly what they did
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.
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.
Counterpoint: the janky-ass Pokémon games that suck and still print money.
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.
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.
if they dont’t market it as something related to horizon then what’s the issue? we have millions of clones of various games with different graphics, and so what?
I went to the game’s website to see how they portrayed the game as opposed to taking whatever cherry-picked similarities Sony chose to use as their argument.
Wow. It is fucking identical. Maybe the gameplay is different, but the art is indistinguishable.
The hint of gameplay in trailer looks like a near copy of monster hunter games to me.
Edit - funny though, Monster Hunter x Horizon actually seems like a great combo, but not like this.
Horizon is such wasted potential. 2 games in 8 years, and a LEGO spinoff. Where is Horizon 3? Where is Horizon Warriors? Where is the Horizon RPG?
The world needs to be fleshed out so an RPG would actually be pretty good. The problem is it’s a pretty world but it isn’t really very interesting. The humans who occupy the world are frankly boring and you can only fight so many robot elk before you want to do something else.
A prequel would be interesting, detailing what happened and maybe explaining how things ended up the way they now are.
An endless online humans vs machines prequel, basically Helldivers, would have been great.
They’re not robot dinosaurs, they’re legally distinct robot mammals.
Yeah I don’t have the greatest love for Sony but they have a really good point with this.
It’s basically the same game; Robot animals have taken over the world because reasons, Humans survive in small groups and have reverted to some kind of native american inspired spirituality for some bizarre never explained reason, you play as hyper athletic female warrior type who has to fight said robot animal things, your mission is to acquire some long lost secret technology from before the world was taken over by robot animals.
There’s got to be irony somewhere in Sony striking a deal with Palworld, then suing another company for copying the art of their game.
Is the art of Palworld similar to Pokémon?
You can be the judge of that.
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.
That’s why it’s irony, Sony support knockoff, got their game knockedoff and mad about it.
But is Palworld really a knockoff? Some of the designs are similar, but I didn’t get the impression that whole game is a knockoff.
If we used Nintendo’s logic, we would never have any other CRPGs beyond Ultima. I am don’t support such measures.
Yes it is, the design of some of those monster at least.
I’m not here to defend anyone, i just find it funny. If you wanna defend sony or whosthatpalworlddev, you be you.
I would rather have more competition in the market.
There are some monster designs that are very similar to Pokemon, but FWIW Pokemon has a lot of simple designs inspired by real animals anyway.
Interestingly, most of the copied ones are the non-animal designs like Goodra with Liligant’s flower
pikachu, bulbasaur was pretty obvious
Yessss pls damage each other
imagine spending all that dev time to just get shredded. bruh
Do they have a case? As long as Tencent isn’t actively copying Horizon beyond an aesthetic, are they infringing on anything?
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.
They asked for the IP to horizon when making it and made a “different” game when told no
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.
Yeah, I gotta go with Sony on this and holy shit that is horizon zero dawn all the way!
I saw the trailer for that game and laughed my ass off, i legit thought it was a horizon DLC and when I realized it wasn’t, I couldn’t get past the obvious fact that it’s a straight ripoff that barely changed anything