miHoYo-Backed Space Startup Launches World's Largest Solid Rocket; NGA Users Debate: Is This Even a Gaming Story?

Just how far can a gaming company's investment reach? miHoYo gave an unexpected answer: rockets.

On January 11, 2024 at 1:30 PM, the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center used the Gravity-1 commercial launch vehicle from waters near Haiyang, Shandong, successfully placing three Yunyao-1 satellites (No. 18–20) into their planned orbits. This was the maiden flight of Gravity-1 — China's self-developed, and the world's largest, solid-fuel carrier rocket — setting multiple national records including the most powerful Chinese commercial rocket and the first bundled Chinese commercial launch vehicle.

Gravity-1 was independently developed by Eastern Space Technology (Shandong) Co., Ltd. And miHoYo is one of its investors — on May 21, 2022, Eastern Space announced the completion of a 400-million-yuan (~$56M USD) Series A funding round, with investors including Shanxing Capital, Minbank International, and miHoYo.

When the news hit the NGA forum, the first comment to surface was a soul-searching question: "Does this even count as mobile game gossip?" — after all, a gacha game company investing in rockets was clearly beyond what gossip-mongers expected. Others were more accepting: "It counts, it counts — it's rare for miHoYo to have some good news lately."

But the praise didn't last long. One user hailed it as "real social responsibility — without miHoYo, who knows how much technology would have been buried," only to be immediately challenged by others who dug through the commenter's history and demanded to know "where are the donations?" Someone even posted a screenshot mocking miHoYo's earlier controversy over a rumored anonymous 1-billion-yuan donation.

The technical merits of the investment were equally hotly debated. When someone compared it to "a Chinese SpaceX?", they were immediately shut down: "How is a solid-fuel rocket supposed to compete with reusable liquid-fuel rockets?" Another bluntly stated that "solid rockets have been a joke ever since SpaceX came along" and called the whole thing "pure PowerPoint material."

Some users took a different angle, arguing that "miHoYo isn't the only investor — other companies should be in the headline too," suggesting miHoYo was hogging the spotlight. Supporters hit back with "where are the people saying miHoYo's investments are useless?" — to which a rebuttal landed: "By that logic, shouldn't you be kowtowing to Tencent for three days straight?"

A meme-style comment asking "does the rocket say 'Tech Otaku Save the World' on it?" — referencing miHoYo's famous slogan — and a casual "wow, miHoYo really flew this time" added the absurd humor unique to anime-gaming communities. As of now, neither Eastern Space nor miHoYo has publicly responded to the online debate.