Children and teenagers may soon lose the ability to play Genshin Impact's gachas. The game developer has agreed Ban players under 16 from making in-game purchases without parental consent to resolve a Federal Trade Commission complaint. He also agreed to pay a $20 million fine. Samuel Levin, director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said: “Genshin Impact deceived children, teens and other players into spending hundreds of dollars on prizes they had little chance of winning.”
The developer's marketing actively targets children, the commission's complaint said, and the company also violated COPPA by collecting personal information from children under 13. HoYoverse, the US arm of the developer, is allegedly deceiving players “about the odds of winning” its rarer loot box. prizes and uses a confusing virtual currency system that is unfair to children and teenagers. The FTC says this misleads players about how much they will actually have to spend to get the rarer prizes. Genshin Impact uses a gacha system instead of traditional loot box mechanics, in which players can “pull” banners to win a random item or character.
Under a proposed order, the Federal Trade Commission wants to ban Genshin Impact from selling loot boxes using virtual currency, unless it provides the opportunity to purchase them directly for real money. He wants to prohibit the developer from misrepresenting loot box odds and processes, and also require the company to disclose gacha odds and virtual currency exchange rates. The commission wants to require HoYoverse to delete personal information collected from children under 13 unless it was also obtained with parental consent. However, a federal judge still must approve the proposed order taking into account all of these requirements, so it will not be enforced immediately.