There is zero here that'll hold up, none of it is copyright infringing. Sony should have left it alone and not given them free advertising cause it actually looks good.
Mnementh said:
That is most likely untrue. First of all books existed before copyright. But more importantly: there were studies on the era that had established printing with Gutenbergs printing press but before the introduction of copyright, and it saw an explosion of authors and texts. The reason is the economical incentives for printers. Before copyright a successful text probably was printed by others withing a few months. So there was a strong incentive to pay more authors for more new texts. After the introduction of copyright these incentives shifted. You could now ride on a success, so the need to constantly print new authors with new texts vanished. Also the printers could delegate their risks towards the authors. They could the authors pay less by giving them royalties - which were dependent on success. So no success, the author got not much out of it. Before copyright the authors would be paid upfront, as no long term gains could be made anyways. So especially for books we know that copyright isn't beneficial to creating more. For other media it is not as clear, as these mostly came after the existance of copyright. |
Hmm, interesting. I wonder how that would play out today, but I'm not exactly holding by breath to see this during my lifetime.
| VAMatt said: As I've said elsewhere, the whole notion that one can own ideas and prevent others from using those ideas in their own works is nonsensical. Copyright and patent law is bullshit. It is antithetical to human progress. |
Yep, it's a big restriction on freedom of expression and is anti art so free speech advocates should be talking about it a lot more often. The unlikely scenario where this game becomes a bigger hit than the Horizon games would be on Sony for creating something less appealing. Tencent taking this existing idea and making a more refined and even better version of it would be the best case scenario.
Tencent responds:
"At bottom, Sony’s effort is not aimed at fighting off piracy, plagiarism, or any genuine threat to intellectual property. It is an improper attempt to fence off a well-trodden corner of popular culture and declare it Sony’s exclusive domain.
In Sony’s telling, Horizon Zero Dawn is 'like no fictional world created before [or] since. That claim is startling, because it is flatly contradicted by Sony’s own developers, not to mention the long history of video games featuring the same elements that Sony seeks to monopolize through this lawsuit.
Sony’s Complaint tellingly ignores these facts. Instead, it tries to transform ubiquitous genre ingredients into proprietary assets.
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."
| curl-6 said: Tencent responds: "At bottom, Sony’s effort is not aimed at fighting off piracy, plagiarism, or any genuine threat to intellectual property. It is an improper attempt to fence off a well-trodden corner of popular culture and declare it Sony’s exclusive domain. In Sony’s telling, Horizon Zero Dawn is 'like no fictional world created before [or] since. That claim is startling, because it is flatly contradicted by Sony’s own developers, not to mention the long history of video games featuring the same elements that Sony seeks to monopolize through this lawsuit. Sony’s Complaint tellingly ignores these facts. Instead, it tries to transform ubiquitous genre ingredients into proprietary assets. 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." |
I have no idea how this lawsuit will go but it feels like Tencent has no real ground here. They designed the game from the groundup to be Horizon. The iconography and design is ripped straight from that of the series (which is work that would've been created by other actual professionals within the Horizon team). Sony passed on giving the license to them and Tencent did next to nothing to adjust anything of the game.
This game looks or sounds nothing like any other IP they mention in their response. it literally looks like Horizon.
But we'll see how this all plays out.
16,482 
| VAMatt said: As I've said elsewhere, the whole notion that one can own ideas and prevent others from using those ideas in their own works is nonsensical. Copyright and patent law is bullshit. It is antithetical to human progress. |
Agreed. This is no different than the whole Palworld fiasco (in terms of what is deemed “justifiable” for these businesses to target/“shoot down”). Tencent came to Sony with a proposed HZ game, Sony declined, and so Tencent decided to sell their product without Sony’s backing under a different IP. Sony should have no grounds to stand on here. Maybe this is a stretch…but that’d be like if Nintendo sued Sony for releasing the PlayStation after talks fell through during the early-90s.
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