Genshin Impact takes a long time before it opens up the option for you to engage in the multiplayer features of the game, leaving the majority of your time playing solo. Despite this, you no doubt noticed that every time you boot up the game you have to wait for it to connect to the servers before you can resume your adventures. This is usually reserved for pure multiplayer games, such as MMOs, but that's not the case for Genshin Impact, leading many players to wonder if you can play offline. Here's all the details about Genshin Impact's online requirements.
Genshin Impact's Online Requirements
Just to get it out of the way up front, you cannot play Genshin Impact offline. No matter what system you're playing on, be it PC, PS4, or mobile, you will need a stable online connection if you want to log in and play. If you're like many players out there who enjoy this game as a solo, action RPG experience, this might not make much sense.
The main reason Genshin Impact requires you to always be online while playing is because it is a free to play game that depends on you making in-game purchases to fund its continuous development. The game utilizes a premium currency model that isn't all that different from other mobile titles, and if you're not online, you can't access the store.
Going hand in hand with the store, because the game is built to incentivize you to make these real money purchases to unlock new characters and weapons, they need to make sure no one cheats the system. If you could play the game offline, some people would find a way to exploit or hack the game to instantly unlock whatever they wanted, which the developers obviously don't want you to do.
Despite many players encountering a variety of issues and errors due to the game being always online, there's little to no hope that it will ever allow you to play offline. That's unfortunate for anyone who has an unreliable connection, or no internet at all, but they need to push those gacha systems in order to keep the game up and running.