#oneaday Day 1001: Cultural divide

I'm absolutely baffled by the current  situation with Genshin Impact. From what I can make out, players are angry that developer MiHoYo hasn't made a bigger deal of the game's anniversary, and hasn't showered them with free gifts. And as a result, they've been review bombing not only Genshin itself, but also a variety of completely unrelated apps.

I cannot fathom how one gets into such an entitled mindset that you would think that sort of behaviour is any way justifiable — particularly as Genshin Impact is a free to play game and, as such, doesn't really "owe" its players anything. Yes, it's an exploitative shitty gacha game at its core, but you get a lot more "game" here for free when compared to mobile-only gacha titles.

The implication that these crazy people are presumably trying to suggest is that Genshin Impact would be nothing without its players, which is, of course, true to a certain extent in the case of free to play games. Except most free to play games make the majority of their money from just a few players with deep pockets (odiously described as "whales", originally just by people in the industry, but this has filtered into culture at large). Somehow I suspect the people misbehaving in this instance aren't the ones spending huge amounts of money on the game. Or at least, not huge amounts of their own money on the game.

I have never once felt that I am owed free shit for the anniversary of a game, regardless of if it's an online or offline title. FFXIV always does cool stuff for its anniversary and that's always fun to see, but I don't need or expect it; the game itself is the reward, and if I'm no longer enjoying it, I can just stop.

I assume it's some sort of young person thing where the people who say things like "oomfie" and talk about "comfort characters" are mostly responsible for this. More than anything, however, it cements by complete lack of desire to go anywhere near Genshin ever. Regardless of how nice Mona's tights-clad arse is.