Today is Genshin Impact's one-year anniversary, and players still aren't happy with Mihoyo's response to complaints around the celebration. The backlash has spread to Genshin Impact's mobile reviews, where players are review bombing it, and its official Discord servers.
Early complaints began in late August with rumblings over Mihoyo's planned anniversary rewards not being as generous as other mobile games and generally not meeting expectations. Those complaints saw a steady uptick this last week as Mihoyo shared its in-game rewards and real-life prizes for community events, resulting in the original announcement getting ratioed on Mihoyo's own app and Twitter. Frustrations have only grown since, and many cite Mihoyo's silence as a point of contention over the celebration.
Now, Genshin Impact's player base is flocking to its mobile storefront to leave bad reviews. Its rating on the Apple App Store still safely sits at 4.7, but its Google Play rating—where it has millions of more reviews—has tanked and hovers around two stars. Hours ago, the Google Play rating was 3.7 stars, so Mihoyo's open-world RPG is falling fast.
Honkai Impact 3rd, the action RPG title Mihoyo launched years before Genshin, is now seeing some of that backlash spillover. New one-star reviews cite anger over Genshin Impact's anniversary event rewards, but the game is still maintaining its four-star average on Google Play. However, Honkai Impact 3rd doesn't even have half of Genshin Impact's ratings, and the usually well-received game has already dropped a fraction of a point.
Just about every aspect of Genshin Impact's anniversary event has drawn ire, including Mihoyo's release of character-themed hashtags on Twitter. The game's official Discord servers—which Mihoyo has two of due to popularity—is also seeing a flood of angry comments as players spam Qiqi emotes. Mihoyo's first and more populated Discord is experiencing more severe message delays, but both seem to have implemented Discord's Slowmode feature to set a timer on communications and control user spam.
Mihoyo has yet to respond to the increase in player complaints or the subsequent flood of one-star ratings. TheGamer has reached out for comment but has not received a reply.