I can’t deny that the game itself looks beautiful, and according to thousands of its active players — it’s fun! MiHoYo h

If someone gets invested in Genshin Impact because they’re a fan of RPGs, anime or Breath of the Wild, but they aren’t too good with handling finances, or they really, REALLY want the strongest warrior with the biggest sword or the cutest girl with the biggest bahonkadonkers, it can easily lead to addiction, massive amounts of reckless spending, and in the worst cases… crippling debt. Self-control should not be a prerequisite for enjoying a video game, nor does it excuse manipulative design tactics.

I think it’s safe to say that this is making people upset. On the Chinese app store TapTap, Genshin Impact is currently being review-bombed in response to both the rate controversies AND issues with the stamina cap, which directly controls how much you can play the game. The rating has dropped to a 4.8 out of 10, and similar concerns are being echoed throughout the game’s global communities as well.

I heard there’s a character that plays like Noctis from Final Fantasy XV. So I could pull endlessly in pursuit of them, or buy Final Fantasy XV when it goes on sale for like $15, and use my remaining $6,985 on, I dunno, every indie game ever released on Steam and a burger.

MiHoYo somehow managed to avoid the negative connotations of the gacha genre by indirectly hiding Genshin Impact beneath the misnomer of a “free-to-play anime Breath of the Wild.” Whether the game is a shameless Breath of the Wild clone OR a breathtaking masterpiece that will be heralded in gaming for decades to come, the monetization system as a whole is the one of the reasons why I’d have reservations about making standard content for it, let alone taking a sponsorship.

To simplify the current concerns regarding Genshin Impact, some players believe that MiHoYo isn’t being completely transparent about their pull systems. In countries like Japan and China, there are strict and complex regulations for mobile games and digital gambling that don’t exist in North America, with one of the most prominent being that developers are required to list the exact rates to pull different rarities and characters. Not only does Genshin Impact have an atrociously low base five-star rate of 0.6%, but community-organized speculation and analysis on thousands of pulls reveal a confusing soft pity system and fluctuations in the rates as a whole. For those of you less acquainted with all this wacky terminology, this just means MiHoYo hasn’t published the exact specifics on how each piece of the gacha system works, making it harder for people to have a better shot at their favorite characters by saving up.

Now that we’re done talking about numbers and math, let me get into how this strengthens my prior stance about the game. The most common outcry I’ve heard in response to criticism is that Genshin Impact is free. Fans of the game don’t use it to excuse every critique, but the most frequent arguments I’ve seen look something like this.

In the end, I don’t have anything to say about Genshin Impact’s gameplay, nor can I rightfully criticize it in any regard. I’m not interested in it, but I can’t deny the sheer number of people who love it. Ultimately, the discomfort I feel in regards to the publicity it has received since release is that when you raise the open-world anime RPG curtain, there’s still some manipulative, unforgiving mechanics pulling the strings backstage. By releasing on PC and consoles instead of just mobile, Genshin Impact was introduced to an entirely new market, dodging the negative connotations of digital gambling and engrossing hordes of new consumers unfamiliar with the shady side of free-to-play monetization.

For many, this genre is about pulling that overpowered character, or the one they want the most, or the newest, hottest girl. Or guy. Monsters? Sure. The stress-filled gambling that fuels the gacha economy is what drives content, community discussions, and memes about the genre as a whole.

Streamers and YouTube creators (whether sponsored or not) further push this agenda by advertising Genshin Impact using cutesy or clickbait titles about the hundreds to thousands of dollars they’ve spent on the game so far, parading around their ability to drop amounts that would be incredibly unhealthy for the average player. Peeking into the Genshin Impact section on Twitch to be presented with titles like “$1,300 spent so far :)” is very bizarre, to say the least.

While these comments may be true for a specific subset of players, the amount of money MiHoYo is generating makes Genshin Impact anything but free. Sure, you may be able to experience much of the game without spending a single cent, but that doesn’t mean other players won’t be tempted, or that you practically cannot experience all of the gameplay mechanics developed in an action RPG without spending massive amounts of money on gacha banners.

The regulations I mentioned earlier were in response to some Japanese players spending upwards of $6,000 for a single unit in games like Granblue Fantasy. My problem, however, isn’t just the fact that these games are gambling and can be dangerous… It’s that this type of gambling keeps getting normalized. I’m not immune to this either. It’s fun to make jokes about luck and misfortune amidst a community of fellow players suffering together, and I’ve done it in several videos in the past. However, as I continue to distance myself from gacha games and reflect on the genre more and more after all of my experiences, it just makes me sad.

At this point, I’d rather just buy a game for $60 but be given the ENTIRE experience, rather than knowing I can experience the “full game” for free while tons of content, experience multipliers, and daily rewards that make game more fun or less grindy are locked behind purchases.

Just because the game is free to download doesn’t mean the entire experience is free, or that no one else will be tempted to spend money on a game specifically designed to make you want to spend money. Designed so well, in fact, that it generated $100 million in revenue in the first two weeks. At that point, if the interesting gameplay mechanics or characters you desire in an open-world action RPG are locked behind repetitive grinding, a mediocre stamina system, daily rewards, a battle pass and an unscalable gacha paywall… does the game being “free” really mean anything?

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I made the same mistake, and the same answer came out. Even since that double-whammy, I’ve sworn off asking about parents. If someone wants to talk to me about my parents then I’ll proceed in kind, but until that happens I avoid parental talk.

The concept of “whaling” is nothing new in the mobile gaming sphere, but in case you’re unfamiliar with the amount of spending that goes on in gacha games, players will often drop a LOT of money in pursuit of specific characters.