You’ve probably seen the ads. Or the cosplay. Or maybe you've just spent three hours straight trying to farm artifacts for a character that refuses to crit. Whether you love it or hate it, there is no denying that this game changed everything about how we look at mobile and cross-platform gaming. But when people ask who made Genshin Impact, they usually expect a one-word answer like "China" or "MiHoYo."
The truth is way more interesting than just a corporate name on a splash screen.
It’s a story about three college roommates who were obsessed with anime and a company motto that sounds like a dare: "Tech Otakus Save the World." They weren't industry veterans from Tencent or NetEase. They were just nerds.
The Three Founders and the "Otaku" Vision
Back in 2011, at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Cai Haoyu, Liu Wei (famously known as "Da Wei"), and Luo Yuhao were finishing up their degrees. They didn't want to go work for a boring tech giant. They wanted to make games that they actually liked. Specifically, games that felt like the anime they grew up watching.
They started miHoYo with a small grant and a massive amount of ambition. If you look at their early work, like FlyMe2theMoon or the initial Honkai games, you can see the DNA of Genshin everywhere. But they were struggling. At one point, they were doing everything—coding, art, customer service—out of a tiny office.
Da Wei is often the face of the company now. You’ve likely seen him in the version update livestreams, looking both stressed and genuinely excited. He’s the one who often bridges the gap between the corporate board and the players who are screaming about resin caps on Reddit. It’s rare to see a founder stay that involved in the community, but for the guys who made Genshin Impact, it’s basically their brand.
Was It Just a Zelda Clone?
Let’s address the elephant in the room. When the first trailer dropped in 2019, people lost their minds. "It's a Breath of the Wild rip-off!" was the cry heard 'round the internet. Someone even smashed a PS4 in public at ChinaJoy to protest it.
Honestly? The developers have been pretty open about the fact that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was a huge inspiration. They respected the hell out of that game. But they wanted to do something Nintendo didn't: create a living, breathing anime world that updated every six weeks and worked on your phone.
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To pull that off, they had to scale up. Fast.
The team grew from a handful of people to over 700 for the initial development of Genshin. By 2024, HoYoverse (the global brand they adopted) had thousands of employees worldwide. This wasn't just a small indie project anymore; it was a multi-hundred-million-dollar gamble. If it failed, the company was essentially toast. They poured every cent they had from Honkai Impact 3rd into this "Zelda-like" open world.
The Massive Risk of the $100 Million Budget
Most mobile games are cheap to make. They use simple assets and repetitive loops. The people who made Genshin Impact did the exact opposite. They spent an estimated $100 million before the game even launched.
That is "God of War" or "Cyberpunk 2077" levels of money.
They hired the London Philharmonic Orchestra to record the Mondstadt theme. They built a custom engine version of Unity to handle the cell-shaded lighting across different hardware. They gambled on the idea that people wanted a "Triple-A" experience for free. It turns out, they were right. The game made its entire development budget back in about two weeks. Two. Weeks.
Yu-Peng Chen and the Soul of Teyvat
We can’t talk about who made this game without mentioning the music. For a long time, Yu-Peng Chen and the in-house team HOYO-MiX were the secret weapon. Music in games is often an afterthought, but in Teyvat, the music defines the region.
When you walk into Liyue, you hear traditional Chinese instruments like the Guzheng and Erhu blended with a full Western orchestra. It’s sophisticated. It’s not "mobile game music." Even though Yu-Peng Chen eventually left to pursue his own projects, the foundation he built—this idea that every nation needs its own cultural musical identity—is a huge part of why the game feels so "prestige."
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It’s Not Just One Studio Anymore
While the core development happens in Shanghai, "who made Genshin Impact" is now a global answer. They have offices in Montreal, Los Angeles, Singapore, and Tokyo.
The Montreal office, for example, was specifically set up to focus on the "research and development of a new AAA open-world action-adventure game with shooting-based gameplay." This shows the trajectory. They aren't just the "Genshin people" anymore. They are becoming a global tech powerhouse that happens to love anime.
What People Get Wrong About the "Gacha" Aspect
There’s a lot of talk about how the game is just a gambling simulator. And yeah, the gacha mechanics are how they pay for those $100 million updates. But if you look at the design philosophy, the developers are weirdly protective of the "Free to Play" experience.
You can clear the entire story without spending a dime. You don't need the five-star characters. The people who made Genshin Impact designed it so that the "casual" player—the one who just wants to explore the woods and listen to the music—never hits a hard paywall. It’s a predatory business model wrapped in a very consumer-friendly shell, which is a bizarre contradiction that only miHoYo seems to have mastered.
The Evolution into HoYoverse
In early 2022, they rebranded to HoYoverse. This wasn't just a fancy name change. It was a signal that they want to create something bigger than just a few games. They’ve talked about creating a virtual world that "one billion people" can live in by 2030.
Think Ready Player One, but with more Waifus.
They are investing in nuclear fusion research (no, seriously, they invested in a company called Energy Singularity) and AI technology. They want the tech to catch up to their imagination. It’s easy to forget that at the heart of this massive conglomerate are the same three guys who just wanted to make a game about "Evangelion-style" characters.
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Is it Still the Same Company?
Success changes things. The miHoYo of 2026 is a very different beast than the one that launched Genshin in 2020. They’ve faced massive backlash over everything from "stingy" anniversary rewards to character balance issues (the Dehya situation remains a sore spot for many).
But you can still see the original "Otaku" spirit in the details. The way they reference obscure philosophy in the lore, or the way they hide complex math puzzles in the world design. It’s a game made by people who are clearly fans of the medium.
Breaking Down the Development Structure
If you're looking for the specifics of how the work gets done, it's divided into massive "Cells."
- The Creative Team: They plan the overarching story years in advance. The "Snezhnaya" chapter was being storyboarded before we even got to Inazuma.
- The World Designers: These are the people responsible for the "level design" of the mountains and ruins. They use a mix of procedural generation and hand-crafting to make sure every corner has a chest or a secret.
- The Live Ops Team: These are the unsung heroes. They manage the 6-week update cycle. Keeping a game of this scale updated that frequently without it breaking is a feat of engineering that most Western studios haven't been able to replicate.
What’s Next for the Makers of Genshin?
They’ve already branched out with Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero. Both games take lessons learned from Genshin—like the polish and the character writing—and apply them to different genres.
But Genshin Impact remains the flagship. It’s the "Forever Game."
If you want to understand the impact of the people who made Genshin Impact, you have to look at how other companies are reacting. Sony is looking for "their Genshin." Ubisoft tried it with Immortals Fenyx Rising. Various Korean and Chinese developers are rushing to put out high-budget open-world gacha games like Wuthering Waves.
MiHoYo didn't just make a game; they created a new category of "High-Budget Live Service RPG" that didn't exist before.
Actionable Insights for Fans and Creators
If you're a player or someone interested in the industry, there are a few things you should keep in mind about how this company operates:
- Watch the Credits: If you want to see the individual names of the leads, check the "About" section in the game menu. It’s a massive list, but you’ll see recurring names in the "Special Thanks" section that go back to the 2011 era.
- Follow the Money: MiHoYo is one of the few massive gaming companies that is still privately held. They don't have to answer to shareholders in the same way EA or Activision does. This allows them to take those $100 million risks.
- Understand the Cycle: The "Genshin Model" relies on consistency. If you're a developer, the lesson here isn't "make a Zelda clone," it's "master the 6-week content pipeline."
- Cultural Context: Remember that this is a Chinese game with a global lens. The way they interpret mythology from Germany (Mondstadt), China (Liyue), and Japan (Inazuma) is a specific creative choice that requires a massive localized writing team.
The story of the people who made Genshin Impact is far from over. As we move closer to the final chapters of the Teyvat storyline, the focus is shifting toward what they can do with the massive pile of "mora" they’ve collected. Whether it’s virtual reality, movies, or more games, the three "Tech Otakus" from Shanghai have officially saved—or at least conquered—their corner of the world.