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Tag: Horizon Zero Dawn

  • Horizon Multiplayer Game Gets Surprise Playtest The Same Weekend As Marathon Server Slam

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    The recently announced live-service spin-off game Horizon Hunters Gathering is holding its first closed beta test this weekend. Meanwhile, during that same time period, Bungie’s upcoming Marathon is holding an open beta server slam. This is a bit awkward as the studios and games involved are both owned by Sony.

    On February 24, as spotted by deals guru Wario64, some players who signed up to beta test the colorful co-op action game Hunters Gathering have started receiving emails revealing the first closed beta period. The beta will start on February 27 and will be available until March 1 on both PlayStation 5 and Steam. The closed beta will include two game modes and three playable characters.

    Meanwhile, the Sony-owned Bungie is getting ready to launch its long-in-development live-service shooter Marathon. And as previously announced, it will hold an open beta server slam across Xbox, PS5, and PC from February 26 until March 2. Now, if you’ll get your calendar out—don’t worry, I’ll wait—and mark both beta dates on it, you’ll notice something odd: They overlap quite a bit.

    I guess it was inevitable that, as Sony keeps pushing to launch more live-service games, a few of them would start to step on each other’s toes. And it’s not like they’re directly competing. I imagine the player base for Horizon Hunters Gathering will be fairly different than the group of people interested in playing an extraction shooter like Marathon.

    Still, I’m not sure why these betas had to happen at basically the same time. It just feels like more evidence that Sony’s struggling to balance its live-service plans and ambitions. Maybe it won’t matter. But the optics are bad, and after recently shutting down a beloved remaster studio because of a cancelled live-service God of War game, the last thing Sony needs to be doing right now is giving players—who are already blaming Marathon for Bluepoint’s death—even more reason to be concerned about how PlayStation’s multiplayer-only games are being handled.

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • Sony settles with Tencent over ‘slavish’ Horizon clone

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    Earlier this year Sony sued Tencent for copyright infringement over its Light of Motiram game, calling it a “slavish clone” of Horizon Zero Dawn. Then, earlier this month, Tencent agreed to stop promoting and publicly testing the game. Now, the two companies have reached a “confidential settlement” and the case has been dismissed, according to court documents seen by The Verge. Light of Motiram has also disappeared from Steam and Epic’s game stores.

    “SIE and Tencent are pleased to have reached a confidential resolution and will have no further public comment on this matter,” Tencent’s spokesperson told The Verge.

    When Sony first filed its lawsuit in July 2025, it said that Tencent’s game appeared to copy aspects of not just Horizon Zero Dawn, but other franchise games including Horizon Forbidden West and Lego Horizon Adventures. That included the post-apocalyptic setting with humans and machines coexisting, the visual appearance of characters and even the marketing materials — something Engadget certainly noticed when Tencent first announced the game.

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    Steve Dent

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  • Sony Wants Its ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’ Movie to Hit Theaters in 2027

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    Back in January, Sony announced a movie adaptation of Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Zero Dawn. Nothing has been said about the film since, but it sounds like there’s been enough progress that it may be a few years out.

    Sony’s currently in a legal battle against Chinese tech giant Tencent over the latter’s Light of Motiram, which Sony claims is an explicit clone of its sci-fi RPG series. Per the Game Post, PlayStation Productions head Asad Qizilbash has said in a legal declaration filed Ocotber 16 that the studio “already [has] a working script, and [is] actively searching for a director, with the goal of shooting the picture in 2026 and releasing it in 2027.”

    In that same declaration, Qizilbash also described series lead Aloy as “a key icon in the anticipated film” and important “to the flywheel of franchise building.”

    Initially, Horizon Zero Dawn was being prepared as a television series on Netflix a few years ago. But those plans fell apart in 2024 after intended co-showrunner Steven Blackman was accused of abuse and misconduct while in charge of the Umbrella Academy series. The show was scrapped shortly after the report was published, but Sony certainly doesn’t intend to give up. The Last of Us has been a hit on TV, and further movies and shows are intended for PlayStation properties like God of War, Ghost of Tsushima/Yotei, and Helldivers.

    If Horizon does land in 2027, the only question is, will it release before or after the Legend of Zelda movie drops on May 7 that year? Guerrilla’s game was famously overshadowed by Breath of the Wild releasing shortly after it came out in 2017. It would be a shame (albeit hilarious) to see that streak continue to the big screen.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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    Justin Carter

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  • Homophobes Are Review Bombing Horizon Forbidden West’s DLC

    Homophobes Are Review Bombing Horizon Forbidden West’s DLC

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    Screenshot: Sony

    If you thought that gamers could be normal about two queers sharing a passionate kiss in 2023, then you would be very wrong. Horizon Forbidden West’s new story DLC, Burning Shores, contains a scene in which Aloy can choose to kiss a woman named Seyka, and it seems some PlayStation fans were not happy. Indeed, some players were so offended at being given this choice that they mass review-bombed the DLC on Metacritic. While the Metascore, which is based on critic’s reviews, currently sits at an 82, the user score is at just 3.2.

    The Week In Games: Galactic Refugees And Stone-Age Life Sims

    Burning Shores is a DLC that, for technical reasons, is only available on PlayStation 5s. It brings significant quality of life improvements such as easier looting, though it’s apparently details like the better-looking clouds that rendered it a PS5 exclusive. The update also provides players with the opportunity to have Aloy pursue a romantic relationship with someone nice, which has been a fan request for years. And I’m happy for her. Seyka seems like a nice lady, and Aloy deserves to open up to someone after running around and saving the world for two consecutive games. The main people who are mad right now are the homophobes, who seemingly can’t stand the thought of any gay content in the Horizon series at all—even if whether or not Aloy acts on her feelings is fully optional.

    The bar is on the floor, y’all. But it doesn’t stop bigots from running face-first into it. Recent players complained on Metacritic that “homosexuals” were putting forward a “dirty agenda” that “sabotaged” what could have been a beautiful story. Nearly all of the reviews with a “0” score complained that they shouldn’t be forced to see gay women exist in the world of Horizon. One player called the game “woke propaganda” for allowing Aloy to fall in love with someone she just met—as if that isn’t how human romantic attraction so often works. “[Guerilla Games] retconned the main character for LGBTQ nonsense,” bemoaned another so-called fan who seems to have completely missed that there were sparks between Aloy and Petra in Horizon Zero Dawn. “Aloy never showed signs of being a lesbian,” complained one player who seems to have played a completely different game.

    This is not the first time that a PlayStation first-party franchise was attacked for featuring openly queer characters. This February, homophobes review bombed The Last of Us on HBO because they were forced to endure the unbearable sight of queer tenderness on television. Hopefully with enough repeated exposure, gamers will come to realize that queer video game characters are here to stay. Because culture is moving on, either with or without them.

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    Sisi Jiang

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