On Sunday, Genshin Impact developer miHoYo announced that they have officially launched their new brand HoYoverse. The company will be known as HoYoverse among international audiences outside of China. With the new brand, the company plans to “create and deliver an immersive virtual world experience to players worldwide through a variety of entertainment services.

Although the rebranding seems a bit sudden, miHoYo has been planning to branch out to international audiences and other types of entertainment media since the very beginning. According to the announcement, “The launch of HoYoverse reflects our growing commitment to providing global audiences with immersive entertainment through high-quality, diverse content.” The new name also suggests that there might be possibilities of miHoYo creating their own Metaverse, especially after miHoYo’s co-founder and CEO Haoyu Cai mentioned plans to pursue innovation in a different fields, “including artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and pipeline construction.”

Currently, miHoYo has become a well-known name due to their games Genshin Impact, Honkai Impact 3rd, and Tears of Themis. However, the company has also tried their hand at the virtual YouTuber scene by developing virtual YouTuber, commonly known as Vtuber, YoYo Lumi in May 2020. They also created a desktop wallpaper app called N0va Desktop that includes official wallpaper from their games. However, miHoYo appears determined to venture out even more, as Cai stated, “Our mission in establishing HoYoverse is to create a vast and content-driven virtual world that integrates games, anime, and other diverse types of entertainment, which will provide players with a high level of freedom and immersion.”

This year, miHoYo began their international expansion towards the West, where the company opened their first North American office in Montréal, Canada. The company also plans to have offices in Los Angeles, Singapore, Tokyo, and Seoul to help expand their future content creation and technology research.

With the rebrand, miHoYo changed their customer service emails to reflect their rebranding on Wednesday, Feb. 16. They also made a separate announcement to explain that the email addresses associated with their old branding would be discontinued on May 1, 2022. All emails sent to their previous email addresses would be redirected to their new ones, as well. miHoYo also assured fans that nothing else would change with their accounts except the rebranding.

After hearing the news about HoYoverse, some Genshin Impact players took to Twitter to make light-hearted jokes about the company’s rebranding:

genshin players who will start bragging that they’ve played genshin since the MIHOYO era

— make up a genshin player .ᐟ  (@makeupagiplayer) February 17, 2022

Twitter user windflowerlia also suggested that the rebranding created the miHoYo Cinematic Universe:

it’s not mihoyo anymore, it’s hoyoverse – or as i like to call it, MCU (mihoyo cinematic universe)

— 🌼 lia ✨ enkanomiya lore: the sequel 🌼 (@windflowerlia) February 14, 2022

All in all, it will be interesting to see the direction miHoYo takes with HoYoverse in the future and what that will mean for their current games.