miHoYo cracks down on Genshin Impact leaks, sending dataminers into exile

Andrew Amos
Genshin Impact leakers being shut down Baal Raiden Shogun hunt decree

Genshin Impact leakers like Honey, ImpactYoimiya, abc64, and WangshengFP have been forced into exile as miHoYo starts a massive crackdown on dataminers. The developers have sent legal threats and cease and desist letters to stop the flow of leaks.

Genshin Impact leaks are popular, to say the least. Dataminers are always racing to try and grab the latest information before miHoYo like upcoming banners, characters, and the newest regions of Teyvat.

There is a flip side to the coin of getting all the information early though. The first is that, for some, it ruins the surprise of a big update. The second is it can sometimes lead to problems for miHoYo, the game’s developers.

While there are beta versions that are commonly datamined, miHoYo draws a hard line at “developer kits” ⁠— unreleased versions of Genshin Impact only the devs should see.

However, they’re now taking action to try and stop as many prominent leakers as possible, with a handful of big accounts going offline in the last week.

Baal in Genshin Impact
The “Leaker Hunt Decree” has started in Genshin Impact.

Abc64 and ImpactYoimiya, two prominent leakers, both had their Twitter accounts deleted. Suspicion is because of copyright claims made by miHoYo, forcing them into exile.

Reacting to that change, WangshengFP announced they would be stopping their own leaks temporarily.

“With everything that’s happened, we’ve made the decision to pause posting any leaks content until further notice. Thanks for understanding, and we also hope that this issue will be resolved soon,” they said on Twitter.

The biggest ‘leaker’ caught up in the crackdown is Honey. The website is a popular database for all things Genshin Impact, including unreleased tidbits of lore and a look into the future.

miHoYo sent the site operators a cease and desist letter on September 10, giving Honey 24 hours to shut down their site.

“[We] hereby report an abuse case, relating IP infringement and phasing, on a website with a domain name registered under your service,” the letter from miHoYo’s lawyers read.

“The infringement website aforementioned contains and displays openly the confidential statistics and copyrighted works of our game package as well as materials that have not even been published by us yet.”

Honey resisted, instead migrating their servers to a different platform to try and avoid miHoYo ⁠— while keeping the site live.

They are holding out for now, but there are concerns the site could be shut down in the near future, losing a valuable resource to the Genshin Impact community.

genshin impact seirai island
Leaks for upcoming Genshin Impact patches might slow down because of miHoYo’s crackdown.

While leaks for the upcoming Genshin Impact patch 2.2 are still flowing thanks to dataminers like Dimbreath, things might be getting slower in future updates.