Genshin Impact creators' new AI girl project closes a month after release

Many know miHoYo (HoYoverse) for games like Genshin Impact, Zenless Zone Zero, and Honkai Star Rail, but the company also has other projects. This summer, it released BSide: Olivia Lin.

This is not a game, but rather an AI companion with whom users could chat and listen to music together. The AI avatar in BSide: Olivia Lin is a girl who, according to the lore, lives in Shanghai and studies music and psychology. The free-to-play project generally received "very positive" reviews from those who were able to try it: only Chinese (simplified) was available, and the Steam page itself was blocked in some regions.

BSide: Olivia Lin was released in July, and this month miHoYo announced the project's closure. The game's servers are expected to be shut down on August 31, and the project will be removed from Steam.

According to SteamDB statistics, BSide: Olivia Lin is popular: peak online exceeded 7,000 "players," and then it consistently stayed within 1-2 thousand. Following news of the closure, there has been a surge in interest — today the peak exceeded 5,000 users.