HoYoverse: How Three Students From a Shanghai Dorm Built a Gacha Empire

In January 2011, three computer science students at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Cai Haoyu, Liu Wei and Luo Yuhao, started a games studio in their dormitory. Their first app, FlyMe2theMoon, came out that September and went almost nowhere.

Fifteen years later, the company they built, miHoYo, known internationally as HoYoverse, runs some of the most lucrative games in the world: Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero. And on December 4, it launches something completely different: Petit Planet, a cosy life simulation.

Here is how the business works, and why its biggest game is now a test of how long a hit can last.

From Houkai Gakuen to Genshin

miHoYo was formally registered in February 2012, and its early games were small anime-styled mobile titles. The breakthrough was the Honkai series. Houkai Gakuen 2, known in English as Guns Girl Z, became so important that it accounted for about 96% of the company's revenue when miHoYo filed for a stock market listing in 2017. Honkai Impact 3rd followed in 2016.

Development of Genshin Impact, working title "Honkai 4th", began in January 2017. It was a huge bet: an open-world action RPG for phones, PC and PlayStation, free to play, with characters sold through gacha, a lottery-style system where players spend currency for a random chance at new heroes. It launched on September 28, 2020.

The HoYoverse machine

In February 2022, the company launched HoYoverse as its international brand, run from Singapore, with studios and offices in Singapore, Montreal, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Seoul. Its formula is now well established: big-budget, anime-styled worlds, released on mobile, PC and console at once, updated every few weeks with new characters and story, and monetised through gacha.

Honkai: Star Rail, a turn-based RPG, arrived in April 2023, and Zenless Zone Zero, an urban action game, in July 2024. By 2022, miHoYo employed around 5,000 people.

The company is private and does not publish its financial results, so its exact revenue is unknown. Market estimates give a sense of scale. According to AppMagic data reported in September 2025, Genshin Impact had earned at least $6.4 billion on the App Store and Google Play alone, not counting PC, PlayStation or its web shop.

The maturing hit

Genshin's numbers also show the challenge every live game eventually faces. According to the same AppMagic estimates, Genshin earned $1.8 billion on mobile in its first year, its best ever. In its fifth year, mobile spending fell 42% to about $505 million, around a quarter of its first-year total.

That is still a lot of money. But it shows why HoYoverse keeps launching new games: no single gacha game stays at its peak forever, and the company needs a pipeline to replace fading revenue. China's own industry data in 2026 showed revenue from anime-style mobile games falling about 9% in the first half of the year, for the same reason.

The company has also faced regulators. In January 2025, HoYoverse agreed to pay $20 million to settle a complaint by the US Federal Trade Commission over how Genshin sold loot boxes to children, and agreed to block players under 16 from buying them without a parent's consent.

What comes next

HoYoverse's answer is to widen its range. At a media event in Korea in November 2026, it presented two new games ahead of G-STAR 2026 in Busan, where it is running a large booth:

• Petit Planet, its first life simulation, in which players build up their own small planet, farm, decorate and visit neighbours. It launches globally on December 4 on PC, iOS and Android.
• Honkai: Nexus Anima, a new Honkai game about collecting and raising creatures called Anima and battling with them, with no release date yet.

Why it matters

HoYoverse proved that a Chinese studio could build a global, premium-quality franchise and sell it on every platform at once. Genshin changed what players and publishers thought a "mobile game" could be, and companies around the world, including in Korea, have tried to copy its formula ever since.

WGC's take: Petit Planet is the most interesting HoYoverse launch in years precisely because it is not another anime action RPG. If a cosy life sim can find a big audience, HoYoverse will have shown it can grow beyond the formula that made it rich.

What to play next

• Genshin Impact, still free on PC, PlayStation 5, iOS and Android.
• Petit Planet, from December 4 on PC, iOS and Android.
• Hands-on demos of Petit Planet and Honkai: Nexus Anima at G-STAR 2026 in Busan.