Genshin Braces for Impact

By Catherine Liu

April 25, 2025

Genshin Impact is an open-world roleplay game produced by the company HoYoverse. The game falls under the category of a Gacha Game, a term coined after the Japanese capsule toy machines known as gachapon. When playing a gachapon, players add money to the machine to receive a randomized plastic toy. Online gacha games are similar in the sense that the player use real money converted into in-game premium currency to obtain randomized items that affect their success in the game.

On January 17th, 2025, HoYoverse reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. In it, HoYoverse was fined 20 million dollars by the FTC, and also promised to make changes to Genshin Impact. In order to meet the terms, HoYoverse agreed to prohibit children under the age of 16 from making in-game purchases without parental consent.

The Federal Trade Commision (FTC) is also claiming that Cognosphere, the parent company of HoYoverse, violated Children’s Online Privacy Protection Acts’ (COPPA) requirements by collecting data and personal information about children under the age of 13 without parental consent. In addition, the complaint stated that HoYoverse shared information such as user IDs, friends lists, and identifiers that track player’s purchases, progress, and settings with third-party advertisers. 

Another claim from the FTC is that the game’s target audience was children, although it had loot mechanics that involved real money. They claimed that Genshin Impact utilized an anime art style and characters that were created to be appealing to children. HoYoverse also paid many streamers whose content catered to children to promote the game. 

The FTC further claimed that HoYoverse was misrepresenting the odds of obtaining in-game prizes. Last but not least, the FTC also claimed that the in-game currency conversion was confusing and designed in a way to make users unaware of how much they are spending. 

In Genshin Impact, the lootbox system is known as “wishing”. In order to cast a wish, a player must have 2 different types of premium currencies: acquaint fates or intertwined fates. In order to make a purchase, a player must first convert their real money into Genesis Crystals. After converting their money into another currency named primogems, they can spend them and turn them into fates, which are then used for wishing.

Each wish a player makes has a 94.3% chance of obtaining a 3-star item, a 5.1% chance of obtaining a 4-star item, and a 0.6% chance of obtaining the most desired 5-star item. There is also a system known as “pity.” The pity system is in place to ensure even the unluckiest players will eventually get a five star. Every time a player casts a wish, the player gains one pity. Pity caps at 90 and resets when the player receives a five-star item. When a player receives a five-star item, an animation of a golden shooting star flying across the night sky appears on the screen. However, the golden shooting star doesn’t necessarily mean the player is receiving the character they desire, as there is only a 50% chance that the character is the limited character that the player wants. On the other hand, there is also a 50% chance that the player will receive an outdated character from the standard banner that is always available to the player. After the player loses the 50/50, the next character is guaranteed to be on the featured banner. 

After the animation plays, the player will know whether or not they received the five star character they were hoping for. Often, the player is left with a feeling of extreme disappointment when they find out they did not receive their desired character. After that, they have two options: they can either spend money to get the limited character, or hope that they are lucky enough to receive the five-star character quickly in the remaining amount of time left in a player’s 21-day window to be a character in the game.

Losing the 50/50 is a very frustrating experience. Unless the player has a great deal of premium currency saved up, they are unlikely to receive the character before the 21-day window closes. After a limited character leaves, there is no guarantee when they will return. There have been cases of characters failing to reappear for over four hundred days. This gives the player a great deal of incentive to spend money.

However, not everyone shares the opinion that the game utilizes predatory mechanics. Eighth-grade student Annie Tian, who has played Genshin Impact for many months now, shared her opinion: “While it is true that Genshin, like a lot of other games, does have a shop system where you can use real money, it’s not necessary. It might make the game easier, but Genshin can be a free-to-play game that can very easily be beaten without spending money as long as you're willing to dedicate time.” Annie believes that even though the game does have a shop system, it is not a necessary function that players have to use in order to enjoy the game.

Though HoYoverse uses some tactics that could be considered unethical, a player does not need many five-star characters to comfortably be able to clear the hardest content in the game. The two current forms of endgame available are Spiral Abyss and Imaginarium Theater. A player can clear both game modes as long as they have a few relatively recent limited five-star characters. Some creators even cleared the endgame with a team of well invested four-star characters. 

Even though Cognosphere has been fined 20 million dollars, players are hoping that the new updates HoYoverse brings to Genshin Impact will change things for the better and elevate player experience to a new level.