Players being dissatisfied when a game they enjoy is changed is nothing new. Usually they'll take to social media or forums to vent their displeasure, while some will take things further by, for example, orchestrating a cyber attack and attempting to ransom a studio's own data and code. It's rare, though sadly not without precedent, for some individuals to take things even further and threaten actual violence, but that's precisely what happened over the weekend to Genshin Impact developers miHoYo.
According to Chinese outlet Baidu, a man was arrested on the evening of April 24th in Shanghai on suspicion of the attempted murder of Liu Wei and Cai Haoyu, co-founders of development studio miHoYo. The man was armed with a knife and had managed to infiltrate the building before being arrested, but thankfully no one was injured in the altercation and the man is now in police custody.
There's obviously no justifiable reason to commit murder regardless, but the alleged reasoning behind this man's actions is stranger than most. It all comes down to a recent update to Honkai Impact 3rd, another of miHoYo's mobile games. The update, which was applied earlier this month, added bunny costumes and related dance moves to the game in all markets except for China. After a swift backlash from Chinese gamers who found the content out of character and inappropriate, the update was swiftly rolled back, with an official and apologetic statement posted on the official Honkai Impact 3rd Twitter account on April 22nd.
It's not clear whether the unnamed attacker was incensed by the addition of the update and the impropriety of the costumes, or by the fact that it wasn't released in China and was subsequently removed altogether, but one way or another he wanted revenge on the Genshin Impact developers for whatever the perceived slight was. According to Baidu, he waited for an opportunity to come to Shanghai, armed himself with two 9cm knives and intended to kill Liu and Cai before committing suicide.
Unfortunately miHoYo is merely the latest game company to suffer threats of this nature. July 2019 saw a devastating arson attack hit Kyoto Animation, followed by a spate of other threats to other studios over the course of the summer, including a shooting at Twitch headquarters and a bomb threat at Bandai Namco.
The attack will certainly have left the folks at miHoYo shaken, and nobody could blame them for wanting to take some time off. But they appear to be trucking on with more Genshin Impact content, including the upcoming 1.5 update which releases on Wednesday alongside the long-awaited PS5 version of the game. There's lots to look forward to in the game's future, and hopefully said future will be free of any further scares like this one.
Genshin Impact is available now for mobile, PC, and PS4. Versions for PS5 and Nintendo Switch are in development.