Genshin Impact has been having a rough time of it lately. While the free-to-play RPG is still attracting millions of regular players (and pulling in billions of dollars), the community has been taking Mihoyo to task for unbalanced characters, inconsistent updates, and unappealing anniversary rewards.
I personally believe that expecting plentiful freebies from a gacha game designed to bleed you dry is a little optimistic, especially when regular drops of Primogems and Mora are landing in our laps anyway. Either way, fans are mad. A recent (now deleted) tweet from the company turned this anger into unintended hilarity.
Let’s break down exactly what the tweet was about. To celebrate Genshin Impact’s ongoing anniversary, the official account decided to share a challenge for the community to take on. Even at first glance, it is utterly ridiculous. The company set up a new account for an in-game character called Ella Musk (no relation to Elon) and asked players to follow the account to receive rewards for 500k, one million, three million, and five million followers respectively.
That’s a monstrous amount of people, even for a game with the popularity of Genshin Impact. Genshin’s own account only has 2.4 million followers - less than half of Ella Musk’s ultimate goal. Mihoyo’s overconfident inability to read the room made the company look ridiculous, like it hoped for players to fall in line and assist with its overblown social media campaign. The rewards for reaching these milestones were also very Elon Musk-centric. Mihoyo was offering to follow Musk, stream Genshin with him, or even invite him to the studio when reaching the ultimate goal. I suppose he is known for going to space, which lines up very loosely with the premise of Honkai: Star Rail.
Many believe it was a way to drum up hype for Star Rail, an upcoming title from the studio that will take players to space - just like Elon - with a new cast of characters to roll for. The website makes it look amazing, but chances are the majority of Genshin players just aren’t interested. It’s not their game.
It’s another gacha experience, and the community wasn’t best pleased to see its closed beta being promoted before Genshin Impact received all of the fixes they’d been waiting for. The goodwill of players and the anticipation behind the game’s anniversary was being weaponized in a way that feels hopelessly cynical. Upon being dragged by thousands and the account gaining only 57,000 followers, the tweet was deleted and quietly swept under the rug. Oopsy daisy. Genshin Impact isn’t Kylie Jenner or Elon Musk, it isn’t going to attract millions of loyal peasants to grovel at its feet to help out with a poorly structured marketing campaign.
Yet this is exactly what Mihoyo expected, going to show how shortsighted its interpretation of the Genshin Impact community really is, and why they’ve been riled up so much in recent months. It hasn't responded to the controversy at the time of writing, likely undergoing a bit of damage control as it determines the best course of action. If previous dilemmas are any indication, it will hurl out a couple of random rewards for us in the form of unique weapons and resources before hoping we’ll forget about things and try a similar stunt in a couple of weeks.
The trend is beginning to make itself clear, and it’s ridding Mihoyo of the reputation it once had. This isn’t a small indie studio, it’s one of the highest-earning companies in the medium, helping put China on the global stage of games development in a massive way. Now the honeymoon is over, and it must deal with the wrath of fans that come with making silly and unexpected mistakes. Maybe don’t follow Elon Musk on Twitter for a laugh and hope all of your followers to obediently come along for the ride, because they won’t.
Genshin Impact has become a bit of a mystery in the gaming space. It’s incredibly popular, with characters and lore that fans adore and will dig into with each and every update. I’ll moan about its garbage progression and problematic practices again and again, but I’ll still log into my account when the big patch drops to roll the characters that peak my interest. I’m very much part of the problem, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take Mihoyo to task for its wrongdoings.
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This is a gorgeous, ambitious game that will become the benchmark for free-to-play experiences moving forward, so many of its failures might be seen as successes to replicate in a way that isn’t intended. Using a game like Genshin Impact as a marketing tool for another game feels disingenuous, like you’re expecting your audience to buy into another free-to-play ecosystem that exists purely to take advantage of them with a gacha structure that is equally as predatory. Empty apologies and free resources only pave over the cracks of a product that will inevitably fall apart, and I wish the community wasn’t continually being taken advantage of like this. Anyway - screw Elon and Ella Musk, we deserve better.