Honkai: Star Rail leakers ordered to pay miHoYo around $150,000 in damages after distributing unreleased game data and assets
It was determined that the leakers had infringed miHoYo's trade secrets
miHoYo’s legal department announced on October 28 that a court has issued its first-instance ruling in a lawsuit concerning the misappropriation of trade secrets involving Honkai: Star Rail. The two defendants have been ordered to jointly pay 1 million yuan (approximately $150,000 USD) in damages, as reported by IT Home and other local publications.
According to miHoYo, the company discovered that an individual named Yang, who operated the “咖啡森林” (lit: Coffee Forest) channel on the Tencent Channel community platform, had been illegally obtaining and disclosing unreleased content. Specifically, Yang accessed test data from an unreleased version of Honkai: Star Rail and shared both the data and instructions on how to use it. By following Yang’s tutorials, other users were also able to configure their games to access unreleased content.
The other defendant, Guo, had also obtained Honkai: Star Rail test data through illicit means. He allegedly extracted and distributed various assets online, including character models, skills, and gameplay footage. miHoYo argued that the actions of both defendants had seriously infringed upon its rights and interests, and subsequently filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction.
The court has now ruled in miHoYo’s favor at the first-instance level, determining that the defendants had infringed the company’s trade secrets. Both were ordered to immediately cease their infringement, publish statements on their Bilibili accounts and QQ Video channel pages for 30 consecutive days, and jointly pay 1 million yuan (approximately $150,000 USD) to compensate miHoYo for its economic losses and the costs of protecting its rights. The ruling has reportedly already taken effect.
This is not the first time miHoYo and its subsidiary COGNOSPHERE have taken legal action against leakers of content from Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, and other popular titles. Earlier this year, a leaker who livestreamed unreleased footage in a Discord server was ordered to pay approximately $16,500 in damages. The company has also demanded that sites aggregating leaked information remove such content.
Kosuke Takenaka
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