After months of campaigning, Horizon Zero Dawn fans appear to have successfully made their voices heard.
Franchise rip-off Light of Motiram has officially delayed its release by two years, from 2025 to Q4 2027, in an effort to rid itself of its Horizon-esque qualities.
POLARIS QUEST’s Light of Motiram was first announced in November of 2024, with fans of Guerrilla Games’ Horizon franchise quickly homing in on the title.
It was far from celebrated as something that might appeal to Horizon fans; instead, it was quickly branded a shameless rip-off.
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Light of Motiram shares a very Aloy-looking auburn-haired protagonist who inhabits a natural world filled with machine creatures.
One Light of Motiram screenshot featured a machine mammoth that looked a lot like Horizon’s Tremortusk.
Another showed a horned machine that bore a striking resemblance to the Grazers you can find within both Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West.
Well, in July of this year, PlayStation finally made it known that the similarities had come to its attention.
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Sony announced its intent to sue Light of Motiram publisher Tencent.
The lawsuit actually confirmed that Tencent once pitched a live-service Horizon game which was ultimately rejected by Sony.
It’s perhaps not a stretch to argue that Light of Motiram is what it came up with instead.
Clearly, however, Tencent and POLARIS QUEST didn’t do enough to differentiate Light of Motiram.
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In a bid to avoid the costly wrath of Sony, Light of Motiram has quietly been delayed from 2025 to Q4 2027, reflected on its Steam pagem as devs set about ridding the game of its Horizon-like qualities.
Already, several screenshots have been removed from its Steam listing, including the Aloy-inspired heroine and the various similar machines.
No official update has been issued by Tencent nor POLARIS QUEST; this release adjustment has all been done rather subtly.
That’s surely plenty of time for Light of Motiram to focus on its more original aspects; after all, it is supposedly an open-world survival title which Horizon is not.
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Fans of Horizon are happy to see Light of Motiram’s developers doing the right thing.
“The amount of hubris Tencent has to blatantly copy first THEN repeatedly ask for licensing is ridiculous,” remarked Reddit user TheVectronic.
“Not really surprising. The game seriously looked like a pirated version of Horizon,” added MGfreak.
With this whole debacle out of the way, I wonder when an update on Horizon’s next entry will appear?
Topics: Horizon Forbidden West, Horizon Zero Dawn, Guerrilla Games, PlayStation, PlayStation 5, Steam, PC