Recently, internal beta versions of the two games, “Genshin Impact” and “Honkai Impact: Star Railway”, have frequently appeared on social platforms. Among them, the internal beta version of “Genshin Impact” has even reached a million-level playback volume. Whether this is an official trailer or someone deliberately leaked it has become a hot topic. The Xuhui District People’s Court of Shanghai quickly made a ruling on this, ordering the disseminator of the game screen on the Douyin account to immediately stop the dissemination behavior to protect the commercial value and development rhythm of the game from being disturbed.
As the operator of these two games, miHoYo is well aware that the leakage of the internal beta version of the game screen may cause significant losses to its commercial value. MiHoYo found that the game information anchor Wu Moumou had long and exclusively disclosed and disseminated the unpublished version of the game screen of “Genshin Impact” and “Honkai Impact: Star Railway” on his Douyin account. The relevant videos were released during the internal beta of the new version of the game, and the highest number of views of a single video reached 3.96 million and 1.385 million times respectively. This not only infringed upon miHoYo’s copyright, but also violated the industry norms generally followed and recognized in the gaming field, disrupted the operation and promotion rhythm of the game, and damaged the company’s legitimate rights and interests.
After receiving miHoYo’s application for injunction during the lawsuit, the court conducted a key review in accordance with the “Provisions of the Supreme People’s Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in Reviewing Cases of Behavior Preservation in Intellectual Property Disputes”. The court held that Wu’s behavior not only infringed upon miHoYo’s copyright, but also violated industry norms, causing damage to the company’s operating strategy, and his dissemination behavior lasted for a long time and on a large scale. If it was not stopped in time, it would cause irreparable losses to miHoYo. Therefore, the court ruled that Wu should immediately stop disseminating the unpublished version of the game screens of “Genshin Impact” and “Honkai Impact 3: Star Railway”.
The issuance of this ruling not only restricted the behavior of Wu, the game information anchor, but also sent a signal to the outside world: the leakage of the internal beta version of the game screen is not only an infringement, but also a challenge to the rules of the game industry, and must be taken seriously.