UPDATE: Genshin Impact players (including this writer) are receiving gifts from MiHoYo- seemingly the first of four. The first in-game message contains 400 Primogems, and a wing glider originally intended to be in a $30 USD bundle intended to celebrate the upcoming anniversary concert.

For those using machine translation, the above message states:

“Thank You to All Our Travelers(1/4)

Dear Travelers,
We sincerely thank you for your continuous support and love for Genshin Impact, and we would like to offer this thank-you gift to express our gratitude.
In addition, we have specially prepared the Genshin Impact online concert on October 3, and we look forward to you joining us.
May Teyvat bring you more joy and cherished memories.”

Assuming the remaining four messages contain the same number of Primogems- this means players can look forward to 1,400 Primogems. This should be enough for 10 wishes- the gacha pulls to acquire weapons and characters.

The concert bundle will also include an exclusive name card and a harp furnishing. @Genshin_Intel notes the wing glider and harp were renamed, and seemingly no longer associated with the concert.

Due to no official announcement at this time it is unknown whether this was intended as a surprise, or a MiHoYo making up for the reaction to the anniversary.

Original story:

MiHoYo are celebrating Genshin Impact‘s one year anniversary with in-game events and giveaways; but fans are outraged over meager prizes.

MiHoYo’s gacha action-RPG Genshin Impact first released on Windows PC, PlayStation 4, and mobile on September 28th, 2020. Since then it has since made its way to PlayStation 5, and has a Nintendo Switch version in development.

There are several web events going on to celebrate; including a raffle to acquire a Blessing of the Welkin Moon or 100,000 Mora, fan art and cosplay contests, a personalized video highlighting some of your stats and achievements, and more.

You can read all the details about the anniversary events here, and find the new promo trailer below.

The first anniversary hasn’t been without controversy, however. Many players within the community feel that the rewards aren’t adequate for an event as big as Genshin Impact‘s first anniversary [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. The most common complaints are that the main giveaway is a raffle, and only 10% of participants will be awarded the most desirable prize; a Blessing of the Welkin Moon.

This booster sells for $4.99 USD or your regional equivalent, and awards players with 90 Primogems (Genshin Impact‘s premium currency) per day for a month, assuming that you log in every day to collect them. The other 90% of participants will receive the aforementioned 100,000 Mora, which can easily be acquired by doing some daily activities.

Other events are receiving similar criticism, such as the cosplay and fan art contests [1, 2, 3, 4]. While these contests contain a few big ticket items as rewards (such as Razor DeathAdder V2 mice, Apple AirPods, and iPads), the majority of the prizes are fairly meager amounts of in-game items.

Producing high quality cosplay costumes or artwork takes a lot of time and effort, and many fans feel that the rewards aren’t enough to justify entering. There are also the accusations that players are effectively doing MiHoYo’s marketing for them, as the events and raffles encourage participants to share links daily while the events are going on.

The outcry has allegedly led to the game’s official subreddit and other forums to enter lockdown. Threads critical of the event are allegedly being deleted and locked, with the subreddit even requiring mod approval before a thread goes live. Changing in-game signatures (small messages on your profile) have also allegedly been disabled, with others corroborating the claim [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

UPDATE: While we have confirmed this is the case when we played the game at this time, it is worth noting there may be other reasons for it. China will celebrate it’s National Day on October 1st. During such holidays, Chinese games have been noted to shut down certain features to prevent trolling or controversial messages. This is no doubt to avoid the scorn of the Chinese government.

However, the official subreddit still seems rife with those critical of the anniversary [1, 2, 3, 4]. This also includes claims the game’s official Discord server implementing a 30 minute slowmode [1, 2] to cope with an emote spam in protest; featuring the character Qiqi fallen on the ground with an unimpressed expression. The emote is noticeably missing from a recent web-event where fans pick their favorite emote.

The subreddit even highlights one allegation shared on Twitter. Therein, it claims that Google Play allegedly stated (in response to an inquiry about the game’s recent negative review scores) that they are working with MiHoYo to remove all negative reviews from “bots” [1, 2]. However, it should be noted this claim allegedly comes via a third party to even the source.

All of the above has resulted in the game being review-bombed on Metacritic. As of this time of writing, the average user score across PC, PlayStation 4, and iOS is just shy of 4.5 out of 10. The PlayStation 5 userscore is 1.1; but has far less user and critic reviews than other platforms.

The anniversary does coincide with a new in-game event and a week of daily login rewards, however. Moonlight Merriment is a series of story quests and activities based around Liyue Harbor’s Moonchase Festival, and it’s events are reminiscent of previous festivities such as the Lantern Rite and the Windblume Festival.

Some of the activities players can participate in include story quests about the history of Liyue’s ancient Stove God and the origins of the Moonchase Festival, the Moonlight Seeker treasure hunts, and the Trail of Delicacies combat challenges.

Besides the usual assortment of Primogems, Mora, and assorted upgrade materials most events give out, players can also acquire the unique Luxurious Sea-Lord claymore and a Crown of Insight.

Genshin Impact is available and free-to-play on Windows PC (via the official website), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Android, iOS, and coming soon to Nintendo Switch. In case you missed it, you can find our review here (we recommend it!)