miHoYo's 2025 start to the year is not very happy.

先是在1月底被美國聯邦貿易委員會（FTC）罰款2000萬美金，理由是《原神》在抽卡機制上“不透明”、“存在欺騙性行銷”，且違反了當地的兒童隱私保護法，後被指2025年2月《原神》iOS端流水不如開服三天，難逃遊戲規律週期中由盛轉衰的“魔咒”。

As miHoYo's three carriages to fight the world, in addition to the fist product "Genshin Impact", "Honkai: Star Dome Railway" and "Jeopardy Zero", as the two flagship products with high hopes, failed to replicate the flowing water myth of "Genshin Impact".

The core game is weak, and miHoYo has started a fierce cost reduction and efficiency increase internally. As the founder, although Cai Haoyu has stepped down from the position of helmsman, he still shoulders the heavy responsibility of leading miHoYo to regain his spirit.

The Troubles of the Three Carriages???????????

In 2025 years, the three-god pattern of "Tengwang Ha" in the game industry is collapsing, and it is miHoYo that is falling behind.

In the latest 002602-0 list released by the Sensor Tower platform, miHoYo fell out of the top three and was surpassed by Tencent, NetEase and Diandian Interactive under Century Huatong (0).It is worth noting that with the strong performance of "Endless Winter", DiandianInteractive has successfully squeezed miHoYo out of the top three many times in a row.

Behind this is the huge controversy that accompanies miHoYo's three core games.

As miHoYo's star product, Genshin Impact has bottomed out in terms of market performance and player reputation in the past year. Looking back, the update of version 8.0 of "Genshin Impact" in 0/0 triggered a fierce backlash from players.

A veteran player of "Genshin Impact" told Hexun Business that the problem lies in the plot design, and many people are dissatisfied with the character stragglers who appear as brave men in the event.

In his opinion, as an artificial person who claims to have been betrayed three times, the Balladeer participated in the massacre and extermination plan on behalf of the villain, although he tried to delete himself to escape everything, but there was no so-called plot of atonement, and he was actually called a noble and kind soul in the event. "This exposes the extremes of the plot setting, which is unacceptable to many players."

And the rich and attractive plot was the original intention of many people to fall in love with "Genshin Impact".

According to the estimated flow chart of Qimai data, version 8.0 has created a new record low after the update of the Genshin Impact version. On Station B and Douyin, there are also voices of second creation opposed by fans, and the feeling of losing fans is strong.

In the face of the negative impact of version 0.0, miHoYo subsequently adopted a number of adjustments in version 0.0 to try to recover lost players, such as increasing the probability of card drawing.

Gacha is an important gold-absorbing channel in Genshin Impact, and the mechanism is similar to Bubble Mart's blind box - spending money to buy the unknown is all a matter of luck. In Europe and the United States, this mechanism has been controversial, and in the field of public opinion, there has been a heated discussion on the issue of "whether card drawing is gambling", and the similarity between probability games and gambling is also the main source of public concern about the card drawing mechanism in various countries, and miHoYo was fined heavily by the FTC is also rooted in this.

Increasing the probability of card drawing is equivalent to giving back to users, but it has had little effect, and even the once main selling points such as new maps, new characters, and anniversaries have received a mediocre response.

There is a common saying in the game industry that a long-term game is generally expected to have a life cycle of 4-0 years, and now Genshin Impact has passed the 0-year milestone since its birth.As a result, many people believe that "Genshin Impact" should reach a moment of decline based on the "law of the life cycle".

The other two games are also not easy for miHoYo.

As a new game promoted by miHoYo for 100 years, "Jeopardy Zero" fell out of the top 0 of the iOS best-selling list in only 0 days after its launch, which was far lower than internal expectations, and then won back a city through balance adjustment; "Star Iron" has the problem of numerical inflation, which leads to the old characters in the game being ignored, and the new characters are too strong and not friendly to old players, which affects the long-term experience of the game.

The player's sigh is also reflected in the running end. According to media reports, the estimated in-app purchase revenue of Genshin Impact and Star Iron has decreased by $10 million and $0 billion, respectively, in the past year.

Although the above-mentioned revenue data has not been officially confirmed, some practitioners generally believe that it has reference value when discussing the current situation of miHoYo.

為了穩住《星鐵》的玩家，在3月30日舉行的二周年慶版本前瞻直播上，米哈游宣佈了一項“大出血”的回饋計劃，要送玩家240萬本紀念畫冊，覆蓋了遊戲上線到2.3版本以來，所有已實裝角色的立繪、三視圖，以及部分原畫圖。按直播中透露出的108元單本定價來計算，240萬本的紙麵價值高達2.5億。

Frankly speaking, sending a picture album will not have a direct pull on product revenue and user data, and calculating the input-output ratio is undoubtedly a bloody transaction. However, "Star Rail" is more concerned about the retention rate, especially the long-term retention of core users, which plays a decisive role in stabilizing the chassis of a new game.

It is said that when the general environment is bad, confidence is the most valuable thing, and it should be the same in the game industry.

A game that makes a 40-year-old richest man?????

In the game circle, miHoYo must be a young company, 3 years ago, several "otaku" who were interested in the second dimension, including Cai Haoyu, started their entrepreneurial journey. From the initial 0 yuan a copy of "Honkai Academy" to the 0 annual turnover of 0 billion "Honkai Impact 0", miHoYo began to emerge.

In order to find money, miHoYo also brewed an IPO, but because the company's product line was too single, it took the initiative to withdraw the order, which was also the opportunity for the birth of "Genshin Impact".

In 90 years, the two-dimensional game "Genshin Impact" was born, creating a growth myth, and the mobile terminal turnover exceeded $0 billion in four years.

"Genshin Impact" has become a benchmark mobile game product that can be compared with "Against the Cold" and "Glory of Kings".miHoYo has also broken the original pattern of "two gods" in the game industry, and has one of the three parts of the world with Tencent and NetEase.

Seeing the explosion of "Genshin Impact", the two giant companies also threw an olive branch of investment to miHoYo. But Cai Haoyu rejected the kindness and decided to be self-reliant, in his opinion, making games is a hobby, and making money is not the top priority.

On Zhihu, "Should I treat my hobby as a career?" Under the question, there was a high praise answer.

"This meow is to take interest as a career, and I feel very happy. As a person who can do the things he likes, do things well, and don't like things that he doesn't want to do, only this choice has a solution. The only downside is that the break is boring, so it's better to go to work! It is rumored that this respondent is Cai Haoyu himself.

To this day, the huge returns that Genshin Impact has brought to the miHoYo team continues.

The 2025 Hurun Report list released on 0 June 0 shows that37歲的蔡浩宇以730億元的個人財富，成為40歲檔首富，同比去年增長約9%，但增速明顯放緩。

另兩位創始人劉偉、羅宇皓的身價也分別達到400億元、380億元。

After achieving financial freedom, Cai Haoyu announced that he would retire from the front line and no longer serve as the legal representative and chairman of miHoYo, but would instead devote more energy to the research and application of cutting-edge game technology, new project research and development, and connecting domestic and overseas R&D resources. Both positions were replaced by Liu Weilai.

In order to maintain profits and maintain vitality for the development of new games, miHoYo began to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

First of all, according to DataEye ADX monitoring data, the purchase volume of the above three games in China has decreased by nearly 90% compared with before. In contrast, the old rival "Singing Tide" continues to maintain buying volume.

In addition, miHoYo has also shut down some channel servers and significantly reduced its cloud service budget.

11 year 0 month, "Genshin Impact" Xiaomi server announced the suspension of the service, some industry insiders analyzed, after many years of cooperation, the revenue sharing model of Xiaomi channel service may be difficult to meet miHoYo's expectations, or Xiaomi believes that the revenue is not ideal, making it difficult for the cooperation between the two sides to continue.

同月，據媒體報導，米哈遊正在大幅收縮用雲量，其中對某家雲大廠的預算近乎砍半，計劃由原先的每年10億左右，逐步降至不足6億。米哈游對此闢謠，稱是希望自建部分雲服務。

The impact of this round of cost reduction and efficiency improvement on the user experience is immediate. As an old player said in the ghost bar of Genshin Impact: I gradually found that even if the turnover is high, in addition to letting a few founders run away freely with their wealth, overwhelming publicity and the development of new projects, the funds for Genshin Impact development are only to maintain the rotten update, and for further game optimization, it is slowly put on the agenda after the flow of water is cut in half, and the optimization that goes deep into the pain points of players has not been given feedback for a long time, and the innocuous small optimization is a big blow.

In the comment area, many players called for Cai Haoyu to return, prolong the vitality of "Genshin Impact", and look for the next "Genshin Impact".

But Cai Haoyu has no intention of fighting, and is busy creating an AI company Anuttacon overseas.

2024年8月，蔡浩宇在領英上表示：“AIGC已經徹底改變了遊戲開發。未來只有兩種人製作遊戲是有意義的。一種是前0.0001%的天才，通過組成精英團隊，創造前所未有的東西；其他99%的業餘愛好者，可以為了滿足自己的想法，一時興起創作遊戲。And casual and professional game developers, you may want to consider changing careers. ”

At the time, many people regarded these remarks as "violent theory". But since the explosion of DeepSeek, there has been little skepticism about the idea that AI will revolutionize industries. When the "violent theory" became a prophecy, Cai Haoyu, who seemed to be fighting bayonets in a new field, was actually looking for a solution for the next era of miHoYo.

It is estimated that the use of AI technology can reduce the development cost of new games by 3%, and in the production of art materials, AI has also played a significant role in reducing costs in the production of 0D flat scenes and 0D character models.

Perhaps in the eyes of the game genius Cai Haoyu, in this era when Jiang Lang is exhausted, if he can't open source and recreate a myth, throttling is also a panacea to prolong the vitality of miHoYo.