Cognosphere, better known as the publisher of miHoYo’s Genshin Impact game filed a Copyright subpoena to Discord, aiming the uncover the identity of one of the most prolific leakers in the Genshin community – person(s) known as Ubatcha. According to TorrentFreak (a publication aimed at piracy and intellectual property-related news), Ubatcha is facing legal action for infringing Copyright. This is not the first time that Genshin leakers have been a target of Copyright takedowns, but as opposed to the previous instances generally only involved the removal of specific links on Twitter, Reddit, and other similar social media.
The court filing TorrentFreak obtained shows that Cognosphere sent a takedown notice to Discord on November 29, requesting the takedown of images, videos, and various other items related to the game features. The subpoena has since been approved.
At the time of writing, Ubatcha’s Twitter, where the majority of the Genshin Impact leaks were posted, has been wiped clean. This includes tweets, replies, but also likes. The Discord server that is run by Ubatcha, Wangsheng Funeral Parlor (named after Hu Tao’s in-game funeral parlor) is still up, with over 270 thousand members (over 76 thousand currently online), but the leak channels mentioned in the subpoena have been deleted along with the infringing content.
Genshin Impact launched in September 2020. The gacha game by the Chinese developer miHoYo (officially known as HoYoverse) earned over 3 billion USD since its launch (as of May of this year) and has a very active player base. Leaks have been a common occurrence for the game because of the BETA tests that begin a few weeks before a new version is released. Players can apply to become testers and chasing down all accounts that share clips of unreleased content is starting to look impossible.
A more detailed report on the court filing can be found on TorrentFreak.
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