MiHoYo
MiHoYo Co., Ltd. is a Chinese video game development and publishing company founded in 2012 and headquartered in Shanghai. The company is best known for developing popular franchises, including Honkai, Tears of Themis, Genshin Impact, and Zenless Zone Zero. Beyond video games, MiHoYo has diversified its output, creating various products such as animated series, novels, comics, music, and merchandise.
Following the global success of Genshin Impact, which became one of the highest-grossing mobile games of 2021, the company launched a global publishing brand named Cognosphere in 2022. HoYoverse was established to manage and expand miHoYo's content production and global publishing outside of China. HoYoverse is based in Singapore and has since conducted global operations under the brand, with offices in Montreal, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Seoul.
Etymology
The letters "H" and "Y" in MiHoYo's name are derived from the names of two of the three founders, Cai Haoyu and Luo Yuhao. The letter "O" was then added because famous companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft contain that letter. Since the combination "HoYo" was already registered, the prefix "mi" was prepended to the name. The prefix "mi" was inspired by the VOCALOID software Hatsune Miku, who was chosen due to her widespread popularity among the otaku community.History
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 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 in July of that year. The team won a CNY 30,000 cash prize provided by Shanda Games. Shanda Games subsequently outsourced them to develop a mini-game called Bubble Hero.
Studio business
In January 2011, the three students established the MiHoYo studio in the D32 university dormitory on their campus. Later that year, Liu Wei, representing the group, participated in the New Entrepreneur Talents competition and won third place. As a result, MiHoYo was awarded a 50-square-meter office, located at No. 100 Qinzhou Road, along with a six-month term and a CNY 100,000 interest-free loan from the Eaglet Program of the Shanghai Technology Entrepreneurship Foundation for Graduates. 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 their game FlyMe2theMoon. As the only artist on the team, he created all the artwork for their 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 the moon." The game was developed using the Cocos2D software and the Box2D physics engine. The game's song, titled "Moon Trip", featured music composed by VOCALOID music producer Yu Jianliu and lyrics written by Lemonjolly. Yu utilised the Hatsune Miku voicebank for the song.FlyMe2theMoon achieved little financial success, leaving the three founders with a monthly income of only CNY 4,000. In search of an investor, Liu Wei represented the team in various university startup contests. Securing funding was challenging due to two factors: the non-mainstream status of anime and gaming culture in China at the time, and the fact that the group consisted solely of recent university graduates. After being rejected in these competitions, they eventually secured an angel investment of CNY 1,000,000 from Hangzhou Skye Network Technology Co., Ltd.. This proved to be MiHoYo's only outside funding.
2012–2016: Company formation and first ''Honkai'' titles
Shanghai Mihoyo Network Technology Co., Ltd. was officially established on 13 February 2012. A member of the FlyMe2theMoon development team, Jin Zhicheng, left in March to accept a job offer at Cisco Systems 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. Cai is the largest shareholder of MiHoYo, controlling 41% of MiHoYo's shares. Liu and Luo control 22.6% and 21.4%, of the shares respectively. The remaining 15% of the shares belong to Miyi Investment Co., Ltd..
''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, they created their first game since the company's formal founding: Zombiegal Kawaii, also known as Houkai Gakuen.The project began in December 2011. It took the team three months just to create four or five demos for the game. The game was developed using the Unity engine and the Autodesk Maya computer graphics software. Over the next eight months, they expanded the gameplay, adjusted values, and added various game systems. The game's first version was released in November 2012, and the first public testing occurred in December of that year.
''Guns Girl Z''
Guns Girl Z, also known as Houkai Gakuen 2, a pick-up-and-play arcade action game, was launched in June 2013. Later in August, the team began working on server architecture design and generation. Work on the peripheral system and game graphics followed in November. Compared to Zombiegal Kawaii, the development time of Guns Girl Z was shorter because it utilised the underlying data, art assets, and core gameplay of the previous game, thus reducing the needed research and development. The core gameplay was further developed by copying and then converting the system of the game Puzzle and Dragons into an action game, a process that took three months. The content taken from Zombiegal Kawaii was expanded with the addition of new characters, weapons, and clothing sets. Testing started on 26 January 2014, and the game was released in March on the Bilibili platform.Though the game achieved some financial success, it suffered from many technical problems, such as top-up failure and server downtime, which were difficult for a team composed of only seven people to manage. Consequently, the company began employing its players as staff. Within the same year, the Honkai Impact 3rd project began, concurrent with the company's vision of creating the "Honkai universe".
2016–2020: Breakthrough with ''Honkai Impact 3rd''
The Honkai Impact 3rd project began in June 2014. On 6 July of that year, Cai Haoyu attended the GameLook Game Open Day conference in Shanghai, where he spoke on the development and promotion of Guns Girl Z. 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 combat gameplay drew creative influences from game series Bayonetta and Devil May Cry. 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.
Honkai Impact 3rd had its internal iOS beta in March 2016. It launched in September, underwent public testing, and was then officially released in October. Recurring characters such as Kiana Kaslana, Raiden Mei, and Bronya Zaychik appear in a story that differs from previous games in the franchise. The gameplay involves role playing and hack-and-slash action, and it also incorporates gacha mechanics. In addition to the game, it was followed by multiple supplementary media, including an anime series, graphic novels, comics, and promotional videos. Though MiHoYo's earlier titles achieved success within Asia, the company did not reach global success until the release of Honkai Impact 3rd.
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.