MiHoYo

• 1. Introduction

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  The Chinese video game developer miHoYo carries a name assembled from initials, a borrowed letter and a singing software character. The company was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Shanghai.

  The H and the Y come from the names of two of its three founders, Cai Haoyu and Luo Yuhao. The O came next, borrowed from famous companies such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft, all of which contain it. The combination HoYo turned out to be registered already, so the team placed the prefix mi in front. That prefix pays tribute to Hatsune Miku, a VOCALOID software character chosen because of her wide popularity among the otaku community.

  Today miHoYo is best known for gacha games, including the Honkai series, Tears of Themis, Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero. It also makes animated series, novels, comics, music and merchandise. How did three computer science students turn a shared love of anime, comics and games into this? What risks came with their first big success? And what happens when a company's unreleased work leaks out before it is ready?

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• 2. Dormitory Beginnings

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  Three computer science students at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Cai Haoyu, Liu Wei and Luo Yuhao, shared a passion for ACG culture, meaning anime, comics and games. They collaborated on projects long before they had a company. Their first, an open-source literature community, won scholarships worth CNY 200,000 at a competition.

  In 2010 the trio built an isometric, tile-based game engine in Adobe Flash Player. They named it the Misato Engine, or Misato2D, after Katsuragi Misato, a character from the franchise Neon Genesis Evangelion. An upgraded version powered Legend of Saha, which they entered in a Flash game competition at the second China Game Developers Conference in July. The game won a CNY 30,000 cash prize from Shanda Games. Shanda then outsourced the development of a mini-game called Bubble Hero to the team.

  In January 2011 the three students set up the miHoYo studio in dormitory D32 on their campus. Later that year Liu Wei entered the New Entrepreneur Talents competition on the group's behalf and took third place. The reward was a 50-square-meter office at No. 100 Qinzhou Road, a six-month term, and a CNY 100,000 interest-free loan from the Eaglet Program of the Shanghai Technology Entrepreneurship Foundation for Graduates. The team moved out of the dormitory in December. Each founder had a desk against a wall, and one large table was set aside for comics and light novels.

  None of the founders could draw, so they contracted an artist named Zhang Qinghua, known as CiCi, through Tencent social media. Zhang was an animation undergraduate at Guangdong University of Technology, and he met the founders during his internship. His first commission was Kiana Kaslana, the main character of a game called FlyMe2theMoon. As the team's only artist, he made all the artwork for its early titles.

  Zhang later recalled staying for a while in Wei's dormitory room. Whenever he went out or fetched water, he had to sneak past the dormitory supervisor. On the day he left with his luggage to graduate in Guangzhou, she said goodbye to him, although she clearly knew he was not a student. He called it a very good first impression of Shanghai. The art he finished in that room was headed for the App Store.

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• 3. A Moon Puzzle

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  On the 28th of September 2011, miHoYo released FlyMe2theMoon on the App Store as an independent developer. The idea came from "Fly me to the moon", the ending theme of the Evangelion anime. That song inspired a puzzle game about a magical girl flying to the moon. The team built it with the Cocos2D software and the Box2D physics engine.

  The game's own song was titled "Moon Trip". VOCALOID music producer Yu Jianliu composed it, Lemonjolly wrote the lyrics, and the vocals used the Hatsune Miku voicebank.

  The game earned little money. It left the three founders with a monthly income of just CNY 4,000. Liu Wei represented the team in several university startup contests in search of an investor, and he was turned down. Two obstacles stood in the way. Anime and gaming culture was not mainstream in China at the time, and the team consisted only of recent university graduates. Eventually Hangzhou Skye Network Technology Co., Ltd. offered an angel investment of CNY 1,000,000. It would remain miHoYo's only outside funding.

  Shanghai Mihoyo Network Technology Co., Ltd. was officially established on the 13th of February 2012. Zhang Qinghua, who had been working as an artist at 4399 Network Co., Ltd., joined that same month as art director and supervisor. In March a member of the FlyMe2theMoon team, Jin Zhicheng, left for a job at Cisco Systems (China) Research & Development Co., Ltd. He had done only a small amount of program development and took no part in management. He handed his equity shares to Liu Wei and Luo Yuhao.

  Cai Haoyu legally represents the company and serves as chairman and general manager. He is also the controlling shareholder, holding 41% of the shares. Liu Wei holds 22.6% and Luo Yuhao holds 21.4%. The remaining 15% belongs to Miyi Investment Co., Ltd. With a company, an artist and a single round of funding in place, the team could now chase a more successful game.

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• 4. Honkai Takes Shape

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  In December 2011, before the company was even formally registered, work began on the game that became Zombiegal Kawaii, also called Houkai Gakuen. The team drew on the side-scrolling shooter Zombie Town and on their shared interest in the anime-manga series Highschool of the Dead. Just creating four or five demos took three months. They built the game with the Unity engine, versions 3.2 to 3.5, and the Autodesk Maya graphics software.

  The following eight months went to expanding the gameplay, adjusting values and adding game systems. The first version was released in November 2012, and the first public testing took place that December.

  The next game grew from the first. Guns Girl Z, also known as Houkai Gakuen 2, is a pick-up-and-play arcade action game. The team explained its origin simply. They had checked the top-selling games on the App Store, found none they wanted to play, and decided to build one they would enjoy themselves.

  In August 2013 the team began designing the server architecture, and work on the peripheral systems and graphics followed in November. Development moved faster than before because the game reused the underlying data, art assets and core gameplay of Zombiegal Kawaii. The combat took three months of work, copying the system of the game Puzzle and Dragons and converting it into an action game. New characters, weapons and clothing sets expanded the material carried over from the earlier title. Testing began on the 26th of January 2014, and the game reached the Bilibili platform in March.

  The game had some financial success, but problems piled up. Top-up failures and server downtime proved hard for a team of only seven people to manage. The company responded by hiring its own players as staff. A larger ambition was already forming in the background, a connected "Honkai universe".

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• 5. Third Dimension

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  On the 6th of July 2014, Cai Haoyu spoke at the GameLook Game Open Day conference in Shanghai about developing and promoting Guns Girl Z. He also revealed that the team was already working on a third Honkai game, with its core gameplay in progress. The Honkai Impact 3rd project had begun the month before, in June.

  In March 2015 the team started building its own engines. One was a physics-based animation system that simulated bodies using physical formulas, giving characters more realistic movement and scenes more destructive effects. The same system smoothed over abrupt jumps between animations. The team also developed its own technologies for 3D modeling, light mapping, and real-time and pre-rendering. Production of the game's assets began in October 2015.

  The combat took creative cues from the series Bayonetta and Devil May Cry. The developers also studied Guilty Gear Xrd, which used 3D cel-shading. No one on the team had worked on a 3D project, so the move from 2D was a steep challenge. Creating the first artwork, model and animation for Kiana Kaslana took six months. After a test run the team threw that work away and started again from scratch.

  Honkai Impact 3rd had an internal iOS beta in March 2016. It launched in September, went through public testing, and was officially released in October. The recurring characters Kiana Kaslana, Raiden Mei and Bronya Zaychik appear in a story that differs from earlier games in the franchise. Players get role-playing and hack-and-slash action, with gacha mechanics built in. An anime series, graphic novels, comics and promotional videos followed. Earlier miHoYo titles had succeeded within Asia, but global success arrived only with this game.

  International servers opened in sequence after the launch in Mainland China. Japan came on the 22nd of February 2017, followed by Taiwan on the 18th of May. South Korea opened on the 17th of October and Southeast Asia on the 1st of November. North America and Europe came last, on the 28th of March 2018. The game stayed mobile-exclusive until the 26th of December 2019, when a PC version arrived.

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• 6. Growth and Risk

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  Within two years of Honkai Impact 3rd's release, miHoYo grew from seven people to approximately 200 employees. More than 100 of them worked in research and development. The staff was young, with an average age of 29 and 84% of employees under thirty. Later still, the headcount passed 1,000.

  On the 15th of February 2017, miHoYo filed for an initial public offering with the China Securities Regulatory Commission, planning to raise over one billion Yuan. The filing process raised concerns about financial stability. The main worry was dependence on a single intellectual property, the Honkai series. At the time of the first filing, Guns Girl Z supplied 96.34% of the company's income.

  Regulators pointed to two dangers. The company might fail to launch new products or refresh existing games, and so lose users. It might also fail to keep pace with shifting player tastes, causing the Honkai series to lose its appeal. On the 19th of December, miHoYo submitted an updated prospectus that counted Honkai Impact 3rd in its revenue. The Honkai titles together then made up 98.82% of total revenue. For reasons that remain unknown, miHoYo withdrew the application in 2020.

  In November 2018 the company launched Miyoushe, an official community for players, also called miHoYo BBS. It carries official game news and event merchandise, along with practical tools such as calculators and character-building simulations. Above all, it serves as a platform where players create their own material. A mascot named Miyouji, accompanied by a rabbit that appears in the forum's logo, was revealed on the 30th of April 2020 and wears different themed costumes for each miHoYo game.

  The global counterpart launched on the 16th of January 2020 as miHoYo Forums, the official forum for a game then still in development. It was later renamed HoYoLAB, with a mascot named Mimo that also serves as its logo. The HoYoLAB app began closed beta testing on the 1st of June 2021 and launched officially on the 15th of July.

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• 7. Open World Gamble

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  After Honkai Impact 3rd went live in September 2016, the developers spent about half a year asking what their next product should be. They later described the first half of 2017 as a very anxious time. They went back to their old question of what they themselves wanted to play. The answer was open-world console games, with their huge worlds and surprising freedom to explore.

  Genshin Impact began development in January 2017 under the working title "崩坏4", or "Honkai 4th". Producer Cai Haoyu wanted a new project that would strengthen the company's core research and development abilities. Over the next seven months the team tried several prototypes. Then Cai played Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and the team took inspiration from its world exploration. Other influences included the random events of Grand Theft Auto, the strategy of Divinity: Original Sin, and the game developer Naughty Dog.

  The developers admitted they had greatly underestimated how hard an open world would be. The production team started at 150 people. It grew to 300 by mid-2019, 500 by April 2020, and 700 by February 2021. The research and development budget began at 25 million USD and passed 100 million. The game earned that money back two weeks after release.

  Much of the budget went into music. Yu-Peng Chen joined as music producer and composed the scores for the regions of Mondstadt and Liyue. Zhang Qinghua, the artist who once dodged a dormitory supervisor, served as senior art director.

  The first beta test came in June 2019 and focused on core gameplay and the Mondstadt region. In early 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted overseas promotion. Development slipped by a month because working from home was almost impossible and employees could not reach office equipment. The second beta, featuring Liyue, followed in March, and a third came in July. Genshin Impact was released on the 28th of September 2020. It became one of the highest-grossing mobile games of 2021.

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• 8. HoYoverse Era

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  On the 14th of February 2022, miHoYo announced HoYoverse, a brand for markets outside Greater China. A Singaporean company, Cognosphere Pte., Ltd., established in 2021, would operate it, with Cai Haoyu as CEO. Its stated goal was "to create and deliver immersive virtual world experiences for global players". That included research in artificial intelligence and cloud computing. On the 18th of July 2022, HoYoverse announced a new headquarters in Jurong East, Singapore, planned to hold a team of hundreds.

  HoYoverse also set up studios in Montreal, Los Angeles, Singapore, Tokyo and Seoul. It handles international distribution of miHoYo's games and runs the HoYoLAB community platform. Some events and merchandise outside China still name miHoYo, or refer jointly to "miHoYo / HoYoverse". The company promotes merchandise through pop-up retail stores in cities including London and Chicago.

  In September 2023 the board resolved that Cai Haoyu would no longer serve as legal representative and chairman of miHoYo. Liu Wei took over both roles. Several media outlets reported that Cai would move to North America and was interested in large language models. miHoYo told the press that he would keep working on cutting-edge technology, new projects, and connecting research and development resources at home and overseas.

  Two more games followed Genshin Impact. Honkai: Star Rail, a turn-based role-playing game in a space fantasy universe, was announced on the 5th of October 2021. Players take the role of a Trailblazer who travels between planets on a train called the Astral Express. It launched on the 26th of April 2023 and reached PlayStation 5 on the 11th of October 2023. Zenless Zone Zero is an urban fantasy action game set after a disaster called the Hollows, with the metropolis of New Eridu still standing. Players act as a Proxy who guides others through dangerous Hollow terrain. It launched on the 4th of July 2024 for PC, mobile and PS5 at once.

  In June 2025, miHoYo sued a leaker named Alfredo Lopez in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. He allegedly streamed pre-release footage of the Honkai: Star Rail character Castorice to a Discord server with more than 12,000 members. The company asked for $150,000 in damages. The judge, André Birotte, Jr., criticized Lopez for never responding to the suit, but acknowledged that he had removed the stream. The ruling set the sum at $16,500. Lopez told someone on Discord that he was not bothered, saying "They got like 3 screenshots on me".

  In February 2026, miHoYo filed a second suit, in the U.S. state of Georgia, against a leaker called HomDGCat. The complaint said HomDGCat ran a wiki holding unpublished material from games including Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail between September 2023 and December 2025. HoYoverse made an estimated $5.38 million from anti-leaker damages and settlement fees in 2025.

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