Tencent, the Chinese conglomerate behind the likes of League of Legends through Riot Games and Fortnite through Epic Games, has announced its next title, Light of Motiram – and fans are all saying it looks eerily similar to Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West.
Developed and published by Tencent subsidiary Polaris Quest, Light of Motiram sees a world overrun by colossal machines, with the player able to train ‘Mechanimals’ to defeat bosses through tropical rainforests and barren deserts.
Sounds pretty familiar, right?
If you’ve played the Horizon games at all, the premise will sound extremely similar, and that only exacerbates when you see the game art and trailer, too.
Light of Motiram trailer
There’s no hiding that Light of Motiram looks like it was at least heavily inspired by the Horizon games: in fact, the protagonist appears to be a young woman with long red hair, just like Aloy.
It’s impossible to hide, too, as almost every Horizon Zero Dawn player has seen the trailer and screenshots and are saying the exact same thing.
Backlash & Horizon comparisons
“How do you invest so much money and time into developing a game when you know it’s blatantly copying the core visual elements and art direction from another game?” asked Terrelle Graham on X (formerly Twitter).
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“How do you confidently do it without thinking that it could potentially end in a lawsuit?”
Look at these images. This isn’t Horizon. It’s Light of Motiram. How do you invest so much money and time into developing a game when you know it’s blatantly copying the core visual elements and art direction from another game? Like how do you confidently do it without thinking… https://t.co/olnEYoHGEW
— TG✨🇯🇲 (@TerrelleGraham) November 28, 2024
LevelCap joked that it was “surprisingly [called] not Horizon Zero Creativity.”
Horizon zero West’s Chinese brother has been announced Named Light of Motiram and surprisingly not Horizon Zero Creativity https://t.co/7N7VH3aXPt
— LevelCap (@LevelCapGaming) November 28, 2024
Others even suggested that Horizon developers Guerrilla should be calling their lawyers and planning legal action against the developers for what they see as a “blatant ripoff” of their game.
Light of Motiram has drawn parallels to Palworld, which was commonly seen as a Pokemon ripoff when it first launched but was contrastingly well received as it changed up the classic Pokemon formula and became more accessible.
Palworld developer Pocketpair is still facing a lawsuit from Nintendo, but they’re continuing to find huge success as they branch into other regions and onto consoles too.
Light of Motiram does not yet have a release date and will be exclusively on PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store.
