Genshin Impact reportedly sues Pinduoduo over fake collaboration, gets over $130,000 in compensation

Chinese E-commerce app Pinduoduo was reportedly sued by Genshin Impact developer MiHoYo for promoting a fraudulent collaboration without the latter's authorization. MiHoYo Legal Department’s official Bilibili channel shared the information. According to the post, the judges ruled in favor of the Genshin Impact developers, leading to Pinduoduo incurring a loss of over $130,000.

This article discusses the reported lawsuit involving MiHoYo and Pinduoduo in more detail.

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Genshin Impact developer MiHoYo's reported lawsuit against Pinduoduo explored

Official video posted by MiHoYo on Bilibili (Image via HoYoverse)

In a recent video posted by the official MiHoYo Legal Department account on Bilibili, the Genshin Impact developer stated that it has sued Pinduoduo for promoting a fake collaboration without any prior authorization or consent from HoYoverse. The caption of the video posted on Bilbili reads (as translated by Google):

“Recently, the unfair competition case of MiHoYo v. Shanghai Xunmeng Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as ‘Pinduoduo’ ushered in the final verdict of the second instance). Previously, Pinduoduo released ‘Genshin Impact’ game-themed missions without authorization from MiHoYo, recruiting short video bloggers for commercial promotion, requiring them to download ‘10,000 Primogems for 1 Yuan’ links, and guiding users to click on the link to download the Pinduoduo App.

However, in fact, Pinduoduo cannot provide Primogems. The statement ‘10,000 Primogems for 1 Yuan’ is false propaganda. At the same time, it will cause players to mistakenly believe that there is a specific cooperative relationship between MiHoYo and Pinduoduo, which will have a negative impact on MiHoYo's goodwill, and cause damage.

After MiHoYo filed a lawsuit, the court of first instance determined that Pinduoduo’s behavior constituted false basis of maintaining the false publicity determination of the first instance, it determined propaganda and unfair competition, and ordered it to pay 350,000 Yuan in compensation. Both the original and defendant appealed.

In the end, the Zhejiang Provincial Higher People's Court made the final judgment of the second instance. On the that Pinduoduo constituted unfair competition through counterfeiting and confusion, ordered it to stop the infringement, published a statement to eliminate the impact, compensate economic losses, and reasonable rights protection expenses of 1 million Yuan.”

According to the video, Pinduoduo promoted a collaboration with MiHoYo, wherein influencers and video bloggers were recruited to promote a special "Genshin Impact quest". This quest included a link with the caption "Grab 10,000 Primogems for ¥1", and users were asked to click on the link to complete this quest. Doing so led to an automatic download of the Pinduoduo app on the users' phones, without providing any of the promised Primogem rewards.

With there being no such collaboration in place, Pinduoduo could not reward users with any Primogems. Deeming the collaboration fraudulent, MiHoYo filed a lawsuit against Pinduoduo, accusing the latter of partaking in false advertising and misleading customers by using its franchise.

Subsequently, the court of first instance (trial court) reportedly found Pinduoduo guilty of counterfeit advertising and ordered the online marketplace to pay a total of ¥350,000 ($48,608) to MiHoYo as reparations. However, Pinduoduo appealed the ruling, leading to a submission of the case at the Zhejiang Provincial Higher People's Court. This court also reportedly found Pinduoduo guilty of the same offense and upheld the ruling imposed by the first-instance court.

Furthermore, Pinduoduo was asked to immediately halt this advertising and publish a public notice stating that there was no official collaboration with MiHoYo. Finally, the online retailer was reportedly ordered to pay ¥1,000,000 (1 Million Yuan, or a little over $130,000) to MiHoYo as compensation for damaging its reputation and creating untoward economic losses for Genshin Impact.

This information was also shared in a Genshin Impact subreddit post, where Pinduoduo’s involvement was linked to Temu. The discrepancy could’ve stemmed from the fact that the two are sister companies owned by the same parent company. Going by the aforementioned video post, the Redditor seems to have made a mistake.

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