It appears that the saga of Genshin Impact leakers and miHoYo has yet to reach a conclusion, going by a recently surfaced image. Hardly surprising, when data continues to be released from beta builds.
In this image, it seems that multiple leakers are being sued, involving 7 Bilibili accounts with their account names and UID. The seven musketeers are being asked for 500,000 yuan / ~ USD$78,200. None of the users are apparently bound by a non-disclosure agreement, which would suggest the lawsuit would be invalid. One of the named leakers apparently believe the image is real, adding that the image itself had supposedly been circulating online for a few months. This makes the whole timeline rather unclear, as the threat of lawsuits itself is not new: see the September “discourse”, and this one involving a similar asking sum that was negotiated.
While leaks have thus far been accurate for the most part, it still bears remembering that beta builds are just that: pre-live version builds that don’t necessarily reflect the official release, and miHoYo has every right to exercise the methods they do to combat those they see as potentially “misusing” their intellectual property. And again, there will always be the arguments that leaks highly benefit free-to-play / low-spending players to help them plan, as the new character previews – see Shenhe, Yun Jin – still don’t seem to be enough.
Whatever it is, as long as there’s content to be found, the leakers are unlikely to stop, not with how explosively popular Genshin Impact is, and how hungry fans are for new information.