Earlier this week, a popular Genshin Impact wiki received a cease-and-desist letter from miHoYo due to its usage of leaks on its website. The website, known as Honey Hunter, was asked to take down the Genshin Impact portion of its website due to infringing on miHoYo’s intellectual property. This came alongside other leakers in the community closing their accounts or promising to stop their leaking due to pressure from miHoYo.
However, it appears Honey Hunter is not backing down from miHoYo’s threat. The developer for Honey Hunter went to Twitter to announce the temporary shutdown of their website, only to announce a return coming soon.
“Leaker hunt decree” resistance
miHoYo’s attempts to stop leaks have been ramping up for a few weeks now, with their lawsuit against Bilibili and shutdown of other notable leakers like @abc64real and @SsukunaaA. The closure of Honey Hunter was shaping up to the climax of this whole ordeal, except Honey Hunter is back with a few changes in the pipeline.
Honey Hunter will remove its usage of watermarks as “they don’t need [them] anymore to keep copyright chain to [miHoYo].” Additionally, the website will remove any copyrights related to miHoYo, as the latter was used for the DMCA claim by miHoYo’s lawyers. Honey Hunter was targeted by miHoYo due to its usage of leaked material. According to miHoYo, this was “an infringement on their intellectual property” and also “[harmful] to its players’ experiences.”
The new host of the website is reportedly in Amsterdam, as the Netherlands is not concerned with DMCA takedowns. The website also made a change to its disclaimer, no longer mentioning miHoYo or Genshin Impact by name.
Meanwhile, as predicted, the leaking has not stopped. A set of reliable leaks for Version 2.2 of Genshin Impact is being circulated on the /r/Genshin_Impact_Leaks subreddit, including information about the upcoming battle pass and news about the “roguelike-dungeon” event. The reality is, the leaks will never truly end.
