miHoYo, now branding its global operations as HoYoverse, burst onto the global gaming stage with Genshin Impact in September 2020. The open-world action RPG drew immediate comparisons to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and proved that a free-to-play game with gacha monetization could deliver AAA production quality across mobile, PC, and consoles simultaneously.
Genshin Impact generated over $3 billion in its first year from mobile alone, making it one of the fastest-grossing games in history. By 2024, lifetime revenue across all platforms exceeded $5 billion. The game’s ongoing updates add new regions, characters, and story content roughly every six weeks, keeping a massive global player base engaged.
Founded in 2012 by three college friends, Liu Wei, Cai Haoyu, and Luo Yuhao, in Shanghai, the company started with the Honkai series on mobile. Honkai Impact 3rd built a dedicated fanbase and proved that high-quality action games could work on phones. Honkai: Star Rail, a turn-based RPG launched in 2023, grossed over $100 million in its first month.
miHoYo is privately held and notoriously secretive about its financials, but industry estimates put its annual revenue well above $4 billion. The company has expanded aggressively, opening offices in Montreal, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Seoul, and Singapore.
The company’s success has had a ripple effect across the industry. Gacha mechanics, live-service content schedules, and anime-inspired art direction have become significantly more common in global game development since Genshin Impact demonstrated the model’s massive commercial potential.
