Summary
- Genshin Impact developer Cognosphere has been fined $20 million and banned from letting children under 16 make in-game purchases without parental consent.
- In this case, it was claimed that Genshin Impact deceived children by obfuscating how much money is required to obtain rare characters.
- Cognosphere has since issued a statement, explaining that it will “introduce new age-gate and parental consent protections” for US players in the coming months.
Genshin Impact is a gacha game, which means players have the ability to spend ludicrous amounts of cash in an attempt to pull desired or rare characters. It’s a business model that has served HoyoVerse very well, which has since released other popular gachas like Honkai Star Rail and – more recently – Zenless Zone Zero, but it’s that same business model which has now landed the developer in hot water.
Last summer, Genshin Impact developer Cognosphere found itself on the wrong end of a court case put forward by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which claimed that Genshin Impact was deliberately targeting and deceiving children with its loot box-style currency system, obfuscating how much money is likely needed to obtain rare characters. It also claimed that Cognosphere collected personal information from them, and broke the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) by doing so.
Genshin Impact Developer Banned From Selling Loot Boxes To Minors
Fast-forward to right now, and the results of that court case have been announced, as Cognosphere has been ordered to pay a $20 million fine and ban children under the age of 16 from making in-game purchases in Genshin Impact without parental consent. In a statement on the HoyoVerse website, Cognosphere has claimed it will soon “introduce new age-gate and parental consent protections” for players in the US in the coming months.
“Genshin Impact deceived children, teens, and other players into spending hundreds of dollars on prizes they stood little chance of winning,” said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Companies that deploy these dark-pattern tactics will be held accountable if they deceive players, particularly kids and teens, about the true costs of in-game transactions.”
As far as we can tell, this case only applies to Genshin Impact, but you would have to assume games such as Honkai Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero will be impacted as well, given they have almost identical monetization methods. It’s possible whatever solution Cognosphere implements in Genshin Impact could be implemented in its other games, in an attempt to avoid another hefty fine and lengthy court cases in the future.
While it’s also very unlikely, you have to wonder what this means for the live service landscape in general. The FTC claims it went after Genshin Impact for hiding how much money would be required to pull desirable or rare characters, but you could make a very convincing argument that this is what other live-service titles like EA Sports FC. If the FTC is serious about “dark-pattern tactics” like it says it is, we could see more cases like this in the future.
Genshin Impact is a free-to-play action RPG from HoYoverse. Travel to the massive open world of Teyvat, make new friends, and discover the secrets of the Archons, gods who preside over the seven nations.