The legal dispute between Sony and Tense over the origin of the wilderness suspected of copying the Horizon series has come to a silent end. According to the legal documents obtained by The Game Post, the parties had filed a joint application for withdrawal of the proceedings before the Federal Court of California on the basis of a confidential settlement agreement. The trial, which lasted for almost five months, ended in January 2026, when key hearings were scheduled. The court documents show that the case was closed in the form of a “judgment of bias”, i.e. a permanent settlement of the dispute and that the plaintiff was not allowed to pursue the same case again. At the same time, the parties withdrew all pending motions and each bore the costs of the proceedings. Neither the amount nor the specific terms of the settlement were disclosed.
Original text of documents of the Court:“In accordance with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the parties’ confidentiality settlement agreement, the plaintiff, Sony Interactive Recreation Limited, and the defendant, Inc., Proxima Beta, United States LLC, Tense Holdings Ltd., Proxima Beta Pte Ltd. and Telecommunications Technology (Shanghai) Ltd., jointly agreed, through their respective counsel, that all pending motions would be withdrawn and that the case would be dismissed in a biased manner as of that date. The parties themselves bear the costs and expenses of their litigation.” More significantly, The Origin of the Wild has now come down from Steam and Epic games stores. To date, the game store pages are not accessible (Epic Link Jumps to 404 Error Page, Steam Page Automatically Jumps to Shop Home). This move and the news of reconciliation almost coincided.
The legal dispute between Sony and Tenet began in July this year, when Sony accused The Origin of the Wild of being a “pixel-scale cloning” of the Horizon series and of having proposed, but rejected, the development of the Horizon series, which he then launched. In his petition, Sony stressed that “Internet users and game media, after watching the premonition, agreed that The Origin of the Wild is a simulation of the works of the Horizon: zero dawn, Horizon: West Banners”. In September of the same year, the arraignment refuted Sony’s attempt to “governance the generalization of the type of game” and to “convert into proprietary assets the prevailing elements of the subject matter”. Sony then refuted the argument as “innocent”, stating that although the call had delayed the sale of the game until 2027, “the damage caused and continued”. At the beginning of December 2025, the arraignment suspended the marketing and testing of The Origin of the Desert, and the proceedings, which were scheduled to start in January 2026, ended ahead of schedule with this settlement.
The reconciliation once again highlighted the complexity of intellectual property protection in the global game industry. Despite the closure of the proceedings, the fall-off of the game meant that the arraignment could make substantial concessions. It is not clear whether the Origin of the Desert will return in a renamed or adapted form or that the exploitation will be terminated. The arraignment did not make a public statement about the settlement and the laying down, and Sony and the Tribunal documents disclosed the details of the agreement. The fallout of this controversy has added new examples to the industry’s discussions on “the boundaries of inspiration and abuse” and has left room for reflection on IP protection across jurisdictions.
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