Sony’s Horizon legal battle against Tencent could get very messy, very quickly if a court doesn’t grant it an injunction. Also, a former Call of Duty director is worried about the franchise’s future under Microsoft. Welcome to the latest edition of Morning Checkpoint, Kotaku‘s daily roundup of gaming news and culture.
Have you been watching the latest season of Slow Horses on Apple TV? The British spy thriller is by far one of the best shows on streaming and I can’t believe I never see anyone talking about it. It’s what I wish Watch Dogs Legion had been like. I hope Apple keeps giving Gary Oldman absurd bags of cash to fart and scowl in front of the camera.
Sony was in talks with Tencent about a potential Last of Us spin-off
That’s the latest revelation from an ongoing court battle between the two companies over IP theft, The Game Post reports. Why didn’t it come to pass? Apparently Tencent was just using the possibility to lure Sony into meetings so it could continually pitch the PS5 maker on Light of Motiram, aka “Project Z,” the Horizon-inspired game that’s at the center of the lawsuit instead.
“I recall [a] slide [that] featured a female character with costume design resembling Horizon’s mix of tribal clothing and metal armor, and a robot/animal hybrid resembling a Horizon robotic animal,” Olivier Courtemanche, head of mobile for PlayStation, said in court filings. “Now that I have reviewed the promotional materials released for Light of Motiram, I believe that these images contained assets from the Light of Motiram game. I was confused by the slide given that we had rejected a potential Horizon collaboration and thought we were there to discuss The Last of Us, among other opportunities.”
The Horizon Zero Dawn movie is planned for 2027
According to the latest lawsuit filings, the movie has a script and is in search of a director, with hopes of filming next year. “We are in development for a film based on Horizon in partnership with Columbia Pictures,” PlayStation entertainment production head Asad Qizilbash said in a filing. “We already have a working script and are actively searching for a director, with the goal of shooting the picture in 2026 and releasing it in 2027. The live-action film follows the recent collaborations between Columbia Pictures and PlayStation Productions on the 2022 film Uncharted and the 2023 film Gran Turismo.”
Sony wants a preliminary injunction to halt Tencent’s Light of Motiram development efforts
Okay, so why is Sony telling a court about the Horizon movie? Because it would seemingly come out the same year as Light of Motiram, which is also scheduled to launch in 2027. Sony wants a judge to stop the Chinese conglomerate from moving ahead with this alleged Horizon rip-off even before the court case is settled.
“The copying was so egregious that numerous journalists and Horizon fans called Light of Motiram ‘a major Horizon rip off,’ ‘an obvious knock off,’ a ‘copycat’ with a main character that ‘resembles Aloy to a tee,’ and ‘extremely similar to Horizon Zero Dawn‘,” Sony wrote in recent filings, The Game Post reports.
The great irony of this case? It’s being overseen by Judge Corley, the same judge who ruled in Microsoft’s favor back in 2023 during the infamous FTC trial over its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which Sony desperately sought to prevent.
A former Call of Duty director is worried about the franchise under Microsoft
Glen Schofield was previously creative director at Sledgehammer Games. He says Call of Duty was better when he was there and he’s not sure Microsoft will make it any better.
“I worry about it immensely, I really do,” he told VGC in a recent interview. “Because what’s happening to Gears of War, where’s Halo…you know what I mean? And you look at EA, you look at these big companies, and I’m like where’s the Strike games? Where’s this game? And there’s so many that just fall by the wayside.”
“Unfortunately, once you’re assimilated by one of these companies, I think you take on some of their traits,” he added. “The other thing is, I don’t know, but I would imagine that the Call of Duty bonus system is out, and now you have theirs, and people are going to go ‘that isn’t that.’”
Borderlands 4‘s latest major balancing patch did not arrive this week as planned
“Quick update that our Day 30 Update, which includes balance adjustments, performance and stability improvements, and some new quality-of-life features, will be hitting early next week!” the developers announced on Thursday, when the loot shooter gets its usual weekly update. While activities have still been refreshed, the promised nerfs to the game’s most broken builds will not arrive until early next week, giving fans one last weekend to paint the town red.
ICYMI:
Watch this:
The BF6 drone glitch is absolutely generational pic.twitter.com/WJls3Myxfa
— SoaR Reply (@ReplyGuyChris) October 15, 2025
