miHoYo’s Genshin Impact remains popular and keeps getting new content updates. A new petition for the game has claimed its previous and upcoming content is racist for allegedly whitewashed character designs.
“We call on MiHoYo to stop cultural appropriation and whitewashing in their games and to commit to respectful and accurate representation of all cultures,” the new petition begins.
The petition goes on to claim developer miHoYo has “repeatedly taken inspiration from indigenous cultures without proper representation and respect,” adding many characters from its fictional regions Sumeru and Natlan are “all clearly white or only lightly tanned at best, with the exception of some enemy NPCs.”
The last bit is particularly interesting because the petition and its supporters claim having enemies with dark skin has “sparked concerns of racism among players and indigenous communities.”
The petition then makes its demands of the developer, miHoYo, asking them to: engage with indigenous cultural consultants, revise existing content to ensure accurate representation, and commit to creating diverse and inclusive characters.
At the time of writing the petition has just over 70,000 signatures, with its goal of 75,000 signatures within reach. A twitter/X account called HYVBoycott was also launched, urging supporters of the petition to review bomb the game on its various storefronts.
Several voice actors for the English dub of Genshin Impact have voiced support of the petition, also claiming the game is racist, like June Yoon – voice of Yip Tak, Kujou Takayuki, and other characters:
“With so much research and attention put into the characterization of each nation,” Yoon said, “It’s disheartening to see those efforts be drowned out by the greenlit character designs that doesn’t respectfully portray the people and the deities of those cultures.”
The message was shared from Yoon to Genshin Impact’s main contact email, where the English voice actor also admitted that the game’s world is fictional and thus its characters aren’t related to the races and cultures of our reality.
Another English voice actor, Anne Yatco, who voices Raiden Shogun in the game, also voiced her support of the petition calling the game racist:
“I really hope that a video game company listens to its fanbase when valid criticism is made multiple years in a row about the execution of its research and inclusion of elements/aspects of other cultures,” Yatco said.
Numerous other voice actors from the game, all from its English dub version, have also publicly supported the petition and have claimed Genshin Impact is racist for its character designs.
While all these voice actors are claiming a video game is racist for having light-skinned characters (and not reflective of their cultural claims), a popular English voice actor lamented race-based casting and character designs after he kept being typecasted for Asian roles, because he’s Asian.
A related movement with English voice actors from the other popular booba gacha game, Snowbreak: Containment Zone, saw its developer rebuke their claims the game has too much fanservice, where the actors refused to work on the game.
Genshin Impact is available and free-to-play on Windows PC (via the Epic Games Store and official website), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Android, iOS, and coming soon to Nintendo Switch. Check out our review here!
