Update 15:00 BST:Our original report incorrectly stated that the livestream was shown to 12,000 viewers, instead of it being hosted in a Discord server that had 12,000 members. This has been amended.
Game leaks are nothing new. Before every major game release, it’s inevitable thatsome people manage to get their hands on it earlyand usually start streaming it for others to see ahead of time. We also see the same thing with live service updates, whether it’s someone managing to access the update, ordatamining the details before they’ve been revealed.
However, just because they’re prevalent across the industry, that doesn’t mean thatHoYoverseis tolerating it in its own games. As reported byGame File(thanks,Vice), the company is suing aHonkai: Star Railplayer forstreaming a new character, Castorice, and is seeking $150,000.
Honkai: Star Rail Sued Over A Livestream
In the lawsuit, HoYoverse claims that Alfredo Lopez livestreamed an early, unreleased build of Honkai: Star Rail to a Discord server that had 12,000 members. They say that Castorice was in this build, revealing the character’s gameplay about a month before release.
Castorice had already been revealed as an upcoming addition to the game, so it’s not the character reveal that has landed Lopez in trouble. Rather, it’s this apparent livestream, which HoYoverse claims was a breach of copyright. This means that HoYoverse isn’t necessarily going after Lopez for retrieving the game build, but instead, for allegedly sharing it with others.
We don’t tend to see this approach often with other companies. Typically, studios and publishers will rush out to copyright claim anyone sharing leaked information or material, but they’ll then go after the original leaker, if they go after anyone at all.
As highlighted in Vice’s report, Daniel Ahmad from Niko Partners furtherexplainedHoYoverse’s approach here. “MiHoYo [HoYoverse’s former name] has initiated over 500 legal cases iirc,” he says. “They even have precedent setting cases in China that have led to certain game content leaks being labelled as a violation of trade secrets.”
So, while this is nothing new for HoYoverse, it’s certainly a more proactive strategy than we see with other studios. It remains to be seen if others adopt this too.
