Genshin Impact’s Anniversary Begins With Disastrous Google Classroom Review Bombing (Yes, You Read That Correctly)

Hoo boy. These past days have been absolute mayhem in the Genshin Impact community. From review bombing to chaos on social media, I cannot even start to list how much the current celebrations have angered the player base. Now, whether those cries are justified, I’ll let you judge for yourself as we talk about what happened.

To celebrate the 1st Anniversary, a login bonus, called the ‘Passage of Clouds and Stars,’ began. This login bonus spans over seven days, and players can get up to 10 Intertwined Fates if they log in every day. Intertwined Fates are used in the gacha to pull for new characters and weapons. 10 pulls might sound plenty, but considering you can only obtain a guaranteed 5-star character on your 90th pull, due to Genshin Impact‘s pitiful 1% rate and the fact that many other gacha games celebrate their anniversaries with weeks upon weeks of free pulls, players were outraged.

All channels were hit with slow modes of differing cooldowns in the official Discord server, ranging from seven minutes to six whole hours. Players have incessantly spammed a sticker featuring the undead Qiqi fallen on the ground with a “…” caption above her, as well as copy-paste chains with foul language and slander towards the developer MiHoYo. Additionally, many users have been swiftly banned for “toxicity and foul language.” Furthermore, the ability to customize player names and signatures has been removed at the time of this writing.

This, of course, spread to individuals review bombing Genshin Impact on Google Play and the App Store. In a matter of hours, the game’s 4.9-star rating fell to 2, with varying ratings depending on your region. To give some examples, at the time of this writing, Brazil’s store has the game at 2.1, the Netherlands has it at 2.2, and the US has it at 1.8. But, the review bombing has extended to both MiHoYo developed titles and non-MiHoYo developed games. To name a few: Dragalia Lost, Arknights, Tears of Themis, and even the Google Classroom app. Yes, the app that is utilized by schools to manage online classes is getting review bombed because of the angry Genshin Impact player base. Even I am appalled at it.

As MiHoYo greeted players this morning with a gift of 400 Primogems and a Wind Glider, this drama has died down…somewhat. According to an earlier patch note by MiHoYo, this glider was supposed to be included in a paid package to celebrate the Genshin Impact Orchestra on October 3. Now, as to whether this paid package will still come or if the developers are basically going to give it away for free is unknown. The message attached to the notice states that this is just gift number one of four, with more on the way. The above image was captured in the Asia server. America should get the rewards starting tomorrow.

Honestly, the way this chaotic explosion surprised even me, an avid gacha player who has gone through many different gacha games, each with varying degrees of celebration. I played Kingdom Hearts Union Cross, so I’ve seen my fair share of unappeased fans and community drama. While I can understand the discontent, this level of negativity is very unprecedented, and this goes to show how some communities can get toxic and make you feel like it’s time to quit. Ultimately, I truly hope the developers manage to recover from this fiasco.