After a long investigation, the Federal Trade Commission has reached a settlement with Genshin Impact in the case of violating children’s privacy and deceiving players. The key word here is settlement, the developer has not admitted or declined fault, they just want it to go away.

Here is the fallout. HoYo will pay a $20 million fine. Genshin Impact itself, not the rest of the HoYo catalogue, made around $700 million last which was the first year it came in under $1 billion. So monetary value-wise, absolutely nothing. The changes they have to make are also negligible. 

Children under 16 won’t be able to buy the loot boxes without parental consent, good luck enforcing that. Boxes will need to be made available for purchase directly using real money because cutting out the middleman of virtual currency will make everything better. These two are just kind of nothing, I can’t see much changing here.

All personal information of under 13 will need to be deleted unless the parents say it's ok to keep. COPPA regulations including its notice and consent requirements will also need to be complied with. These two are the only sensible ones really. It’s also worth noting this only affects the US.

I want to play devil's advocate a bit here because I used to play Genshin Impact a lot. There was a lot made of HoYo deceiving players on the odds of winning high-ranked characters. On the banners, if you click detail, it is literally written that you have a 0.6% chance at a 5-star. 

There was also the term Dark Pattern thrown around. Boiled down this basically means trying to trick you into spending money with confusing options or funky UIs. If you do not have the in-game currency to afford the pulls you want, the game asks you to top-up using another in-game currency. If you don’t have this, then it takes you to the Crystal Top-Up page, where the real-world amount is clearly listed.

From the viewpoint of a moderately educated person, I don’t see what the issue is, and I don’t see how the “consequences” will change anything. It feels like if you actually read the menus, you wouldn’t be confused. Also, just don’t save your card details on your child's phone in the first place. Even if it was signposted in neon lights; “THIS COSTS £40.00 REAL GBP POUNDS”, if a kid wants a shiny and has payment details saved, they are going to press it.

Genshin Impact is available to download from the App Store and Google Play.