How Genshin Impact Could Ruin PC Gaming Forever

Genshin Impact may just be the most successful game you’ve never heard of. It’s a free to play Breath of the Wild clone with RPG and Gacha mechanics slathered liberally on top made by the accomplished MIHOYO studio in China. The more you play the game, the more you realise that what I said about BotW is both totally true and an unfair distillation. But for getting boots on the ground, it does the trick.

It’s available on PS4, PC and Mobile. On the two latter, it has cross save support, with seamless pick up and play. The mobile aspect is where alarm bells might start ringing for you. It’s true, it has an energy system that gates progress somewhat. But if you were in it just for the AAA quality storyline you won’t even notice. The same goes for the Gacha mechanics. For the uninitiated, this means gambling for more characters to add to your potential party roster. This is what earned the game US$245 million across Google Play and Apple App store in the first month alone (not including other 3rd party sources in China and payments direct to Mihoyo).

I myself have spent over $300 on Genshin Impact so far and I’m still not considered a big spender. Fortunately you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but it does prey on weak willpower and gambling addictions. The question is, will the popularisation of Gacha gambling be picked up more by the industry at large, now that it’s cross-pollinated from the mobile scene to the sort of pure fields of PC and Console? Is there anywhere a gamer that wrestles with these issues can go to be safe?

Courts in Europe have already been making moves against EA and Blizzard due to their loot boxes. However, there’s a far bigger brush fire on the horizon, and it’s made out of cute anime girls.