Genshin Impact remains one of the most popular gacha games in the world, constantly adding new regions and characters, but now they’ve run afoul of the FTC for their main revenue model.
HoYoverse has now agreed to pay a $20 million fine for a number of issues regarding its “gambling” model of character acquisition:
- They are accused of marketing the game to children and collecting data on them (a violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act in the US).
- The FTC says HoYoverse “deceived children and other users about the real costs of in-game transactions and odds of obtaining rare prizes.”
- The FTC says that Genshin Impact uses “challenging and confusing” purchases, employing infamous “Dark Pattern” tactics to “mislead consumers about the amount of money that players spend on loot boxes on an ongoing basis, and the amount of money that players would likely need to spend to obtain certain prizes.”
“Genshin Impact deceived children, teens, and other players into spending hundreds of dollars on prizes they stood little chance of winning,” said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Companies that deploy these dark-pattern tactics will be held accountable if they deceive players, particularly kids and teens, about the true costs of in-game transactions.”
The result of this is:
- The game must not allow children under the age of 16 to spend money on loot boxes without the consent of their parents.
- Personal information of players under 13 will be deleted until parents give permission that it can be collected (good luck with that). They must comply with all COPPA regulations.
- Loot boxes that you can buy with virtual currency must also be able to be purchased with clearly labeled real money values.
- Loot boxes odds and exchange rates and “multi-tiered” currency need to be accurately disclosed to players.
If you are deep into Genshin Impact it has been possible to ultimately understand the odds and the max amount you’d need to pay to guarantee yourself landing a character, but it’s a maze of gambling odds and 50/50 coinflips and confusing children seems like something that could easily happen. And the FTC says HoYoverse was doing that on purpose.
The changes are…somewhat minimal. And the fine is paltry. Genshin Imapct made $1 billion in its first six months on mobile alone. For a while, it was making a billion dollars every six months without fail, making it one of the most successful mobile games in history. Its least-profitable year was 2024 where it “only” made $710 million. So, $20 million is nothing. This is also not a class-action settlement meaning money will go to players, it’s simply a fine.
Again, these changes are only in the US, and other regions like Asia where gacha games are immensely popular would have to make no further alterations. I suppose this is a warning to other games (this same “dark pattern” claim happened with Fortnite which had to pay $72 million to players), but this is just going to be a drop in the bucket for HoYoverse here.
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