Hi everyone, I came across this interesting article published by the legal department of miHoYo, the company that makes Genshin Impact and the Honkai series. You can find the original text on their WeChat public account. These game, due to their influence, has many people who dig up unreleased designs and future version information to post online. How does the law handle this? I’ve translated it into English below:
Supreme People’s Court of China Releases Intellectual Property Protection Report Including miHoYo Game Leaks Case
On April 21, 2025, the Supreme People’s Court held a press conference to release the “Status of Intellectual Property Judicial Protection in Chinese Courts (2024)” and typical intellectual property cases from 2024. Eight typical cases covered various types including trade secrets, patents, trademarks, copyrights, and anti-unfair competition, involving industries such as video games, biomedicine, and AI technology. Among them was the case filed by miHoYo with the Shanghai Pudong New District People’s Court regarding “leaking unreleased game characters infringing trade secrets.” The Supreme People’s Court noted in the report that this case establishes standards and judicial rules for determining whether unreleased game character designs constitute trade secrets, which has positive significance for promoting healthy development of the gaming industry.
MiHoYo’s game “Honkai: Star Railway” has received an enthusiastic response in the global gaming market since its launch. To provide players with good gaming experiences, miHoYo regularly updates the game with new characters, scenes, storylines, and activities, which undergo internal testing before release. For this purpose, miHoYo and its affiliated companies recruited several players, including Chen, to participate in beta testing and signed confidentiality agreements. During the beta test, Chen, without permission, secretly photographed and recorded test content and screens of seven game characters including “Robin,” capturing their in-game models (character models that players can control), skill effects, skill data, and other test content. Chen disclosed this information to third parties multiple times, which led to the public disclosure of the beta test game footage. Upon discovery, miHoYo filed a pre-litigation behavior preservation application with the Shanghai Pudong New District People’s Court because “the relevant information constitutes trade secrets, and further disclosure would cause irreparable damage,” and filed a lawsuit within the statutory period, requesting the court to order Chen to stop the infringement, eliminate the impact, and compensate for losses. Chen argued that the relevant game characters had already been publicly disclosed before they participated in the test and were not within the scope of trade secret protection.
The Shanghai Pudong New District People’s Court reviewed the pre-litigation behavior preservation application and determined that miHoYo’s request had a factual basis and legal grounds. If corresponding preservation measures were not taken, it could cause irreparable damage to the company’s legitimate rights and interests, and taking behavior preservation measures would not lead to a significant imbalance of interests between the parties. Therefore, within 48 hours of receiving the application, the court legally issued a ruling ordering Chen not to disclose, use, or allow others to use the game content that was unauthorized recorded during the game testing process.
The Shanghai Pudong New District People’s Court ruled in the first instance that for the seven game characters that were secretly recorded, the continuous dynamic game footage composed of elements such as the in-game character models, character skill effects, and skill data conform to the characteristics of business information and the constitutive elements of trade secrets as stipulated in the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, and are protected as trade secrets under this law. Chen, having signed a confidentiality agreement, violated confidentiality obligations by secretly photographing and disseminating these trade secrets, and should bear the corresponding legal responsibility. The essence of trade secret protection is to protect the competitive advantage that trade secrets bring to operators. Even if the game characters had been made public due to version updates, Chen was still not allowed to disclose the test game footage in their possession. The court finally ruled that Chen should stop the infringement, eliminate the impact, and compensate for economic losses and reasonable expenses totaling 500,000 yuan. After the first-instance judgment, neither party appealed.
The Supreme People’s Court pointed out in the report that this case involves the criteria for determining whether unreleased game character designs and other information constitute trade secrets and judicial rules, which has a positive significance for promoting the healthy development of the gaming industry. The pre-litigation behavior preservation ruling, taking into account the characteristics of the online gaming industry, provided timely legal remedies for the applicant. The judgment, targeting the leakage of game characters, not only protects the content of game characters themselves but also protects the business model of enhancing attention through game version updates and the competitive advantages brought by this business model, thereby providing strong regulation against premature “leakers.”
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Your post reminded me of something that I came across last year while researching for a different class! Last year I read about a case in Japan where a man was arrested in 2023 for uploading gameplay videos of the game Steins;Gate: My Darling’s Embrace to YouTube. For the most part, game publishers are willing to accept videos of content creators playing their games so long as they are more than a pure upload of the game itself, but what made this different than regular gameplay videos was that Steins;Gate: My Darling’s Embrace is a visual novel game. In visual novel games, the gameplay consists primarily of reading on-screen text with very few inputs required by the player. Because of this, this type of game is more akin to reading a book or watching a movie. It can be argued that because of the very few inputs, watching gameplay of a visual novel could be a feasible substitute for actually playing the game and that consumers could be disincentivized from buying it after watching a playthrough. The man who uploaded the video did not speak or add any commentary in his videos, only uploading the raw game footage. Further, the gameplay footage also showed the ending of the game without a ‘spoiler’ warning. The Content Overseas Distribution Association, a Japanese government anti-piracy agency, stated that “posting content that contains spoilers exposes the important core of a narrative work, and the damage and impact on rights holders is enormous”. The man was ordered to pay a fine of one million yen (equivalent to approximately ~9,700 CAD) and was sentenced to two years in prison, with a five-year suspended sentence.
In your case, it makes sense to me that unreleased content for Honkai: Star Railway could be considered trade secrets, especially being tied to a business model that relies on timed updates and character reveals to maintain player engagement. In Japan, the focus of the Steins;Gate decision seemed more on narrative preservation and the damage spoilers can do even long after release. It’s interesting to see how the definition of harm varies with the Honkai: Star Railway decision emphasizing market impact before release, with the Steins;Gate decision stressing the long-term value of a game’s story experience.
Japan’s CODA decisions surrounding the Steins;Gate arrest can be found here:
https://coda-cj.jp/news/1531/
https://coda-cj.jp/news/1657/