Genshin Impact’s anniversary event is underwhelming - that much is clear. After a year of players devoting their time, money, and passion to Mihoyo’s beloved RPG - during which the company earned a whopping $2 billion - you would think people would be generously rewarded for their continued investment in the game. You would think wrong.
As a result of this, it’s no wonder that Genshin players are disappointed with Mihoyo’s rewards rollout, although it’s safe to say that the response from a vocal minority of fans is petty, immature, and completely fucking stupid.
First, the rewards. On top of putting on a concert - which is cool, but not necessarily a reward for players as much as an intriguing exhibition of Mihoyo’s own talent - anyone who logs into Genshin Impact during the week-long anniversary event will receive the following:
- Anniversary Event Day One: Intertwined Fate x1
- Anniversary Event Day Two: Mora x80,000
- Anniversary Event Day Three: Intertwined Fate x2
- Anniversary Event Day Four: Mythic Enhancement Ore x18
- Anniversary Event Day Five: Intertwined Fate x2
- Anniversary Event Day Six: Hero’s Wit x8
- Anniversary Event Day Seven: Intertwined Fate x5
All in all, you get ten Intertwined Fates, 80,000 Mora, 18 Mythic Enhancement Ores, and eight Hero’s Wit. It’s not a bad yield by any means, especially when you consider that all you need to do is sign into the game. Still, it doesn’t feel sufficient for the anniversary of a game that has made several billion dollars in a single year, all of which comes from player investment via microtransactions - these rewards are barely distinguishable from those tied to an ordinary update. There are also some raffles and competitions, although the vast majority of players do not stand to benefit from them. You’d think Mihoyo would reward the people pumping cash into its cash cow with slightly more than ten Wishes and a few relatively helpful items. Again… You would think wrong.
What makes matters worse is that fans were preemptively complaining about the anniversary event before even knowing if the brief 2.1 livestream outline revealed everything. Mihoyo could have made an attempt at damage control several weeks ago by being transparent about the event roadmap - it's likely that its silence on the matter has only accentuated both the people complaining about the rewards and the people who feel a weird compulsion to protect a billion dollar corp from justified critique. Other studios have handled similar situations by being candid with players and apologising, or, at the very least, offering a clearer picture of what’s to come.
Yesterday, Mihoyo announced a new giveaway as part of the anniversary, which included an additional 400 Primogems and an exclusive Wind Glider for day one. Today, players received yet another 400 Primogems and two Fragile Resin. Player reception has been expectedly mixed.
It’s completely understandable that people who have spent dozens of hours and potentially hundreds of dollars are disheartened about the event’s lack of spectacle - it’s the game’s first anniversary, after all. It should be huge! When you also consider the history of broken characters in Genshin, all of whom are locked behind the game’s gacha system, and take other major event upsets from recent months into account, it makes perfect sense to be annoyed. Yoimiya is incredibly difficult to use, which is particularly frustrating when you consider that Mihoyo fixed Zhongli when he was in a similar boat.
I personally think review-bombing a game is pretty weird regardless of the circumstances, but causing a bit of a ruckus online is unfortunately the one of the only ways of articulating discontent and affecting change when faced with a billion dollar organisation. Obviously, don’t message individual devs who have nothing to do with corporate choices of this nature, and never confuse meaningful, sincere critique with being a dick. Harassing the voice actors for Diluc and Kokomi achieves nothing - all it does is hurt innocent people for no reason. Flooding Discord servers with morally questionable memes and, on the flip side, weird defenses of a megacorp that made $2 billion last year as if it were a human being who had been personally wronged are also completely ridiculous ways to go about seeking recompense from either side of this intensely weird situation. You can easily tag the official Genshin account on Twitter or civilly email Mihoyo customer support to air your grievances in a productive, measured, and mature manner.
Do you know what you shouldn’t do? Review bomb at least 25 different unrelated games in some sort of deranged protest born of dangerously moronic entitlement because you don’t have the capacity to engage in critical thinking for more than one (1) second.
If you visit the Google Play Store right now, you’ll see a barrage of one-star reviews being launched towards a whole load of games by Genshin fans. A select few of these reviews include messages like “Greedy company dont care about their own player base trash anniversary reward genshin (sic)” (Clash of Clans), “genshin rewards sucks” (League of Legends: Wild Rift), “Anniversary rewards suck mihoyo trash 10 wish???? (sic)” (PUBG Mobile: Resistance), “Anniversary rewards SUCKS!!! Fix the rewards plss mihoyo you HEARD ME!?!?!? (sic)” (Roblox), “Justice for Genshin fans” (Pokemon Go), and many, many more. The full list of affected games at the time of writing includes:
- Alchemy Stars
- Among Us
- Arknights
- Azur Lane
- Brawl Stars
- Call of Duty: Mobile
- Candy Crush Saga
- Clash of Clans
- Epic Seven
- Fate/Grand Order
- FIFA Soccer
- Geometry Dash
- Honkai Impact 3rd
- League of Legends: Wild Rift
- Mobile Legends: Adventure
- Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
- N0va Desktop
- Pokemon Go
- Pokemon Unite
- PUBG Mobile: Resistance
- Punishing: Gray Raven
- Ragnarok X: Next Generation
- Roblox
- Tears of Themis
- The Legend of Neverland
Of these games, only Honkai Impact, N0va Desktop, and Tears of Themis are owned by Mihoyo. The rationale behind review bombing these three - while still ludicrous - makes at least a little more sense. Certain people have been blocked from posting comments on anything affiliated with Genshin - which maybe means you’ve gone a length too far, eh? - and so they have taken to another one of Mihoyo’s properties to continue posting nonsense into the void. There are also some other gacha games on this list like Fate/Grand Order, which, like… it’s not the same game, but maybe people think they’re instigating some sort of general shift across how gachas work. I mean, again, that is ludicrous - you reckon companies who earned $2 billion last year are going to give you extra freebies because you did a wahwah in public?
Review bombing all of the other games has no rhyme or reason to it. It’s just sheer entitlement to publicly slam games that have nothing to do with the one you’re annoyed about because you reckon you’ve been hard done by. In layman’s terms, it’s extremely weird.
The strangest thing about this is that it’s still ongoing, even after Mihoyo issued an official statement to TheGamer noting that it has heard players loud and clear and will rework the anniversary reward scheme. The unedited statement can be read below.
“We’ve been paying close attention on various feedbacks regarding Genshin Impact first anniversary,” it reads. “The opinions and feedbacks from players and fans are really valuable to us, and we wish all fans will continue the adventure and collect more cherished memories in Teyvat. We’ve already come up with more celebrations including the coming Genshin Impact online concert and thank-you gifts to express our gratitude on players’ support all the way along.”
Obviously this is vague - we've only seen the first two days of additional rewards, and there’s currently no telling what “more celebrations” actually refers to. Still, Mihoyo has - rather uncharacteristically - opted to implement new anniversary rewards in order to quell the uproar raised against it.
So, Genshin Impact fans who are still review-bombing games for literally no reason - what do you think giving Pokemon Go a one-star rating now is going to achieve? Do you reckon Niantic is going to phone up Mihoyo and say, “Here. buddy, we’re having a really hard time on the Play Store right now. I’ll tell you what - if you give every Genshin player an extra Wish next week, there might be a shiny Celebi in it for you. What do you say?”
If that analogy doesn’t demonstrate how ridiculous this is, I’m not sure what will. I like Genshin Impact. I also think Mihoyo has done some pretty shitty things over the last year - it wasn’t particularly long ago that I reported on how it refused to reimburse players whose accounts were stolen.
This behaviour, though, reeks of entitlement. It’s also just weird. Please, review-bombers - go to your front door, twist the doorknob, step outside, walk towards the nearest greenery, and submerge your entire face in grass. I promise there’s more to life than furiously typing 100 words a minute to post ridiculous reviews on every decently successful game on whatever app store you’re registered with. It’s okay, mate. It’s a video game. We all know companies are bad. Go make a daisy chain or something - you’ll feel a lot better for it.