2011–2012: Founding years and first game miHoYo was founded by three
Shanghai Jiao Tong University computer science students-
Cai Haoyu,
Liu Wei, and Luo Yuhao (), who shared a passion for technology and ACG (anime, comics, and games) culture. Before formally establishing miHoYo, the team collaborated on several projects. Their first project, an open-source literature community, earned them scholarships worth
CNY 200,000 at a competition. In 2010, the students developed an isometric tile-based game engine called the "Misato Engine" or "Misato2D" using
Adobe Flash Player. The name was inspired by
Katsuragi Misato, a character from the Japanese franchise
Neon Genesis Evangelion. Using an upgraded version of the engine, they developed a game called
Legend of Saha () for a
Flash game development competition held during the second China Game Developers Conference (CGDC) in July of that year. The team won a CNY 30,000 cash prize provided by
Shanda Games. Shanda Games subsequently outsourced it to develop a mini-game called
Bubble Hero ().
Studio business In January 2011, They moved from the dormitory to the office in December. In the new space, each founder had a desk against the wall, while a large table was dedicated to comics and light novels. Since none of the founding students possessed artistic ability, they contracted Zhang Qinghua (), also known as CiCi, via
Tencent social media. At the time, Zhang was an undergraduate student in the Department of Animation at the School of Art and Design at
Guangdong University of Technology. He was in the second half of his senior year when he met miHoYo's founders during his internship. The first character he was commissioned to design was Kiana Kaslana, the main character of its game
FlyMe2theMoon. As the only artist on the team, he created all the artwork for its early titles. Zhang recounted his experience of working at their dormitory:
FlyMe2theMoon miHoYo launched
FlyMe2theMoon on the
App Store on 28 September 2011, operating as an independent developer. The game's concept was based on "Fly me to the moon", the ending theme of the
Neon Genesis Evangelion anime series. The song inspired the team to create a puzzle game centered on a "magical girl flying [to] the moon."
FlyMe2theMoon achieved little financial success, leaving the three founders with a monthly income of only CNY 4,000. A member of the
FlyMe2theMoon development team, Jin Zhicheng (), left in March to accept a job offer at
Cisco Systems (China) Research & Development Co., Ltd. (). He transferred his equity shares to
Liu Wei and Luo Yuhao. Jin had primarily performed a small amount of program development work and did not participate in company management. Zhang Qinghua, who had worked as an artist at 4399 Network Co., Ltd. () joined miHoYo Co., Ltd. in February 2012 as an art director and supervisor. Cai Haoyu legally represents the company and serves as its chairman and general manager; he is also the controlling shareholder and the actual controller. Liu Wei and Luo Yuhao serve as directors.
Zombiegal Kawaii Moving on from
FlyMe2theMoon, the miHoYo team aimed to create a more successful game. Inspired by the side-scrolling
shooter game Zombie Town and their shared interest in the Japanese anime-manga series
Highschool of the Dead, it created its first game since the company's formal founding:
Zombiegal Kawaii, also known as
Houkai Gakuen. and the first public testing occurred in December of that year.
2016–2020: Breakthrough with Honkai Impact 3rd The
Honkai Impact 3rd project began in June 2014. In his speech, he mentioned that the team was already working on the third
Honkai game and that its core gameplay was currently in progress. In March 2015, miHoYo started developing its proprietary engines for the game. They created a physics-based animation system that could simulate the performance of various bodies based on physical formulas, resulting in more realistic character movements and destructive scene effects. This system also corrected abrupt transitions between animations, making them smoother and more natural. In addition, miHoYo developed its technologies for 3D modeling, light mapping, and real-time and pre-rendering systems. Content production for the game began in October 2015. The development team also studied games like
Guilty Gear Xrd, which utilized 3D cel-shading. Since no team member had prior experience with 3D projects, transitioning from 2D development presented a significant challenge. Creating the initial artwork, model, and animation Kiana Kaslana took six months. However, after a test run, the team decided to discard that work and restarted from scratch to establish the games' current system. It launched in September, Following its release in Mainland China, subsequent international servers were opened: 22 February 2017, for Japan; 18 May 2017, for Taiwan; 17 October 2017, for South Korea; 1 November 2017, for Southeast Asia; and 28 March 2018, for North America and Europe. After initially being a mobile-exclusive game,
Honkai Impact 3rd was made available for PC on 26 December 2019.
Company growth and risks Within two years after the release of
Honkai Impact 3rd, the company rapidly expanded from seven-people to approximately 200 employees. On 15 February 2017, miHoYo filed for an
initial public offering (IPO) with the
China Securities Regulatory Commission, planning to raise over one billion Yuan. During the filing process, several concerns were highlighted regarding the company's financial stability. A prime concern was the company's significant dependent on a single intellectual property (IP), the
Honkai series. At the time on the initial filing, the main source of miHoYo's revenue was
Guns Girl Z, accounting for 96.34% of its income. The risk was that the company might not successfully launch new products or update existing game content, potentially leading to a loss of users. Another major issue raised was the possibility that the company could fail to keep up with changing player preferences, causing the
Honkai series to lose its appeal. Due to unknown reasons, miHoYo ultimately withdrew its IPO application in 2020.
Official gamer forums In November 2018, miHoYo launched its official gamer community
Miyoushe (), also known as miHoYo BBS. While used to disseminate official game information and event peripherals, it also features practical tools for players, such as calculators and character-building simulations. Crucially, it serves as a content creation platform for players. The global counterpart, initially called miHoYo Forums, launched on 16 January 2020. It was announced as the official forum for
Genshin Impact. Later, it got rebranded as "HoYoLAB." The HoYoLAB app had begun closed beta testing on 1 June 2021 and officially launched on 15 July. In Chinese forums, the mascot Miyouji () was revealed on 30 April 2020. Miyouji has different themed costumes following miHoYo's games, such as
Guns Girl Z,
Honkai Impact 3rd,
Tears of Themis, and
Genshin Impact. Miyouji is accompanied by a rabbit that appears in the forum's logo. HoYoLAB's mascot is Mimo, who also appears as the logo.
Tears of Themis Tears of Themis is an adventure visual novel game developed and published by miHoYo that combines romance and detective elements. The game released its first PV on 29 July 2019. It started its pre-registration on 29 July 2020, and officially went live on 30 July 2020. The game had a closed beta test for its international version in April and May 2021, and opened its pre-registration in June, reaching over 650,000 pre-registrations. The game received the
Pocket Gamer People's Choice Award in 2022. The game takes place in the year 2030, in a sci-fi setting of the fictional city of Stellis. The player plays as a female defense lawyer who works with four male love interests to solve cases.
2020–2022: Rise to global prominence with Genshin Impact Genshin Impact began its development in January 2017 with the working title "" (; "Honkai 4th"). At that time, producer Cai Haoyu considered creating a new project to enhance miHoYo's core research and development capabilities and present products with significant quality improvement to players in the future. The idea of creating an open-world game came out of that. During the next seven months, the team tried several prototypes. After Cai played
Nintendo's
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the team took inspiration from the game's world exploration experience. Other inspirations came from the random events of
Grand Theft Auto, the strategy in
Divinity: Original Sin, and game developer
Naughty Dog. The production team initially had 150 people. They underestimated the difficulty of creating an open world, so it grew to 300 people by mid-2019, and then 700 by February 2021. The research and development cost of the project began with 25 million USD and then exceeded 100 million, which was recouped two weeks after the game's release. Much of the game's budget was invested in music production.
Yu-Peng Chen joined the project as a music producer and composed the scores for the Mondstadt and
Liyue regions. Zhang Qinghua served as the senior art director.
Genshin Impact had its first beta testing in June 2019, focused on core gameplay mechanisms and the Mondstadt region. In early 2020, the overseas promotion of the game was affected by the
COVID-19 pandemic. Development also got delayed by a month as working from home was almost impossible, and employees could not access office equipment. The second beta testing came in March and featured
Liyue, and then the third beta testing came in July. The game was released on 28 September 2020.
Lumi and N0va Desktop Lumi (stylized as YoYo Lumi) is a virtual actress and YouTuber created by miHoYo, and is an attempt by miHoYo in another field of anime culture. Lumi uses Unreal Engine and
motion capture technology to achieve high-quality cell-shading and rendering, as well as realistic movements, facial expressions, and skin texture. On 14 May 2020, the bilibili account "VAN0va" uploaded the first dance video "N0va LookDev Test", which was not initially announced as a miHoYo work. Later, miHoYo officially revealed its identity with Lumi on 4 August 2020, when it released the dynamic desktop wallpaper software "N0va Desktop". On 15 July 2022, Lumi launched her first live stream on bilibili, which immediately topped the bilibili live stream popularity list. The half-hour live stream attracted a total of 6.6 million viewers. Lumi is part of miHoYo's N0va Desktop project, which allows users to interact with Lumi on their desktop or mobile devices. The N0va Desktop app was released for PC in August 2020, and for Android devices in December 2020. As of mid-2024, N0va Desktop appears to have been discontinued. Its official website has been taken offline, and its X (formerly Twitter) account has shown no recent activity. Products related to HoYoverse website were removed. The associated virtual character, Lumi, also appears inactive, with her last known social media post being a
YouTube video uploaded on 30 December 2024.
2022–present: HoYoverse rebranding and expansion On 14 February 2022, the launch of a new brand "HoYoverse" for markets outside
Greater China was announced, which would be operated by a
Singaporean company Cognosphere Pte., Ltd. established in 2021. Cai Haoyu served as the company's CEO. The official statement said that HoYoverse's goal is "to create and deliver immersive virtual world experiences for global players", including technology research in areas such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and industrial capability building. On 18 July 2022, HoYoverse announced the opening of its new headquarters in
Jurong East,
Singapore, which would serve as the base for its metaverse-related operations announced earlier this year. HoYoverse would build a team of hundreds of people at its Jurong East office. HoYoverse has also set up studios in
Montreal,
Los Angeles,
Singapore,
Tokyo,
Seoul and other places. However, starting from 2022, some of HoYoverse's collaboration events and merchandises outside China in some regional markets still mention miHoYo, or jointly refer to "miHoYo / HoYoverse". In September 2023, the board of directors of miHoYo passed a resolution that
Cai Haoyu would no longer serve as the legal representative and chairman of miHoYo, and his position would be taken over by
Liu Wei. Several media reported that Cai would move to
North America, and has been interested in the
large language models. miHoYo responded to the press that Cai would "continue to devote himself to the research and application of cutting-edge technology, the development of new projects, and the connection of domestic and overseas R&D resources."
Honkai: Star Rail Honkai: Star Rail is a
turn-based role-playing video game developed and published by miHoYo as part of its
Honkai series. The game is set in a space fantasy universe, where the player assumes the role of a Trailblazer who follows the guidance of Akivili, the Aeon of Trailblaze, and travels across various planets using a train called the Astral Express. The game features fantasy elements with myths and legends integrated into a
space sci-fi story. The game was first announced on social media on 5 October 2021, and began its "Origin Test" phase on 8 October. The game entered its "Jump Test" phase on 10 February 2023, for PC, Android and iOS platforms, and launched on 26 April 2023. The game was then ported to
PlayStation 5 on 11 October 2023, with the
PlayStation 4 version still yet to be announced.
Zenless Zone Zero Zenless Zone Zero is an urban fantasy action role-playing game developed and published by miHoYo, set in a futuristic world where a strange natural disaster called the Hollows has taken place. Only one metropolis, New Eridu, managed to withstand the disaster. It leverages vital technology and resources to combat the Hollow threat. Within New Eridu, players assume the role of a Proxy, an expert adept in navigating the perilous Hollow terrains, offering guidance to those who have to enter these dangerous zones. The game released its first trailer on 13 May 2022, and opened for pre-registration and closed beta recruitment. The game had its first closed beta test, known as the "Tuning Test", on 5 August 2022. A second closed beta, known as the "Equalizing Test", was held on 24 November 2023. A third closed beta, known as the "Amplifying Test", was held on 18 April 2024. A technical test for the PS5 was announced on 9 April and was held on 25 April 2024. The game was launched simultaneously on 4 July 2024 for PC, mobile, and PS5 platforms.
HomDGCat leaker lawsuit In February 2026, miHoYo launched a lawsuit in the
U.S. state of Georgia against a leaker named for hosting a wiki which contained exploited information on unpublished versions of their games, which would violate the terms and conditions offered to
beta testers for miHoYo's games, between September 2023 and December 2025. Specifically, they accused HomDGCat of illegally obtaining and leaking unpublished beta content for games including
Genshin Impact and
Honkai: Star Rail, and demanded the closure of the wiki's website and social media accounts. The complaint stated that HomDGCat induced players bound by
non-disclosure agreements to provide unpublished assets from the games, including art, dialogue and gameplay details. They accused HomDGCat of
copyright infringement and stealing trade secrets. The complaint stated that miHoYo had previously issued them warnings under the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act to no avail. In 2025, HoYoverse made an estimated $5.38 million in damages and settlement fees from anti-leaker lawsuits. ==Games and products==