Genshin Impact developer opens “metaverse” headquarters in Singapore

MiHoYo, the developer responsible for anime-style action role-playing game (RPG) Genshin Impact, has opened a new headquarters in Singapore for its HoYoverse.

HoYoverse was founded and announced earlier this year in a statement from the Chinese studio’s co-founder and CEO Haoyu Cai, which said that HoYoverse’s mission is to create “a virtual world that integrates games, anime, and other diverse types of entertainment, which will provide players with a high level of freedom and immersion.”

The new location will house “several hundred employees” across a 28,000-square-foot site and promote a flexible working model, according to a post on the HoYoverse website.

Singapore is MiHoYo’s sixth office and joins the likes of Shanghai, Montréal, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Seoul. The Southeast Asia base of HoYoverse will be a hub for “global distribution and operations,” and will work closely with the company’s other offices to provide “technical support for game development”.

The company will also adopt a flexible working model and encourage employees to work “wherever they feel most creative and productive”. The opening of the new HQ will add “hundreds” of jobs by the end of the year and HoYoverse is already recruiting for multiple roles in game development, engineering, marketing and more.

The metaverse refers to an immersive virtual world where digital characters can interact with each other as they would in real-life scenarios. Virtual reality and augmented reality technologies are considered essential contributors to the development of the metaverse.

In other news, Valve has issued a warning to Steam Deck owners after soaring temperatures took over parts of the world this week. In a Tweet from Valve’s Steam Deck account, the developer said: “For our friends in the midst of a heatwave, a quick note about Steam Deck in high temperatures,” before continuing to explain that the Steam Deck performed best between zero and 35 degrees Celsius.