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miHoYo I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the Genshin Impact community be louder than I’ve seen them for the past couple weeks, protesting miHoYo not giving away any rewards of real significance of the game’s one year anniversary, despite the fact the game has raked in well over a billion dollars from gacha pulls during that time.

The problem is that many of the rewards are being squirreled away in things like fan art or cosplay contests, and in-game rewards are mostly micro web events including one that is actually a gacha system itself. 90% of players will get a relatively useless 100,000 Mora, while 10% will get a daily Primogem drop for a month (worth about $5). No one is amused.

Gacha games usually go all-out for anniversary events, given the revenue they take in and that free items encourage players to stick around. But Genshin is not doing that, and even after weeks of fan pushback and social media ratio-ing, nothing has changed, nothing new has been announced at all, and the already-announced events just keep rolling out. There are three days left until the literal anniversary, September 28, and fans are hoping for a big surprise then, but nothing has been indicated on miHoYo’s end at all.

The main thing fans are hoping to see is a free 5 star. A common idea is that fans could get one of the “base” five stars that are in the generic banner, as after a year, giving all players a single copy of one of them seems like at least *something* of significance, and could benefit both new and veteran players (with constellation additions). Only two 5 stars in history have been given away in Genshin, the base hero you start with, The Traveler, and Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn which was a Sony cross-promotion, though neither of them are as good as the vast majority of the “paid” 5 stars.

MORE FOR YOUDon’t Miss Destiny 2’s God Roll Nightfall Weapon From Xur This Weekend‘Fortnite’ Has Destroyed The ‘Guide Industry’ With Challenge Changes‘Genshin Impact’ Can Afford A Free Anniversary 5 Star Reward The thing is, Genshin Impact is so stingy with its drops that you could even gift every player 10,000 primogems for pulls, and that’s still not necessarily a guarantee that they would get a 5 star from a banner (you’re only guaranteed one every 90 pulls, and it’s only a 50% chance it’s the featured one you actually want). I think the point is that this game has made so much money and the odds are so low of getting what you actually want through earned or paid gambling chance that it does no actual harm to give away something like one copy of one 5 star for an event like this. The player goodwill gained from that would be infinitely more valuable than whatever purchases you might think you’re discouraging. The press from this anniversary has been the worst I’ve ever seen from the game, and it’s hard to believe there hasn’t been a response yet. Maybe that will change before or on the 28th, but I don’t think fans are holding their breath at this point.

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