@@TheValkyrieRising None of this matters because any $ spent is technically a waste bc the result has no value other than as entertainment. This whole line of argumentation is stupid.
@Nothemanni could happen A lot of times, companies will settle this by offering either really money compensation for damages or some free in-game currency It happened the same way with fortnite after the ftc went after them for the loot boxes in save the world part of their game. I received a ton of vbucks after that settlement
Untrue about the surveys. If you put in a birthday that shows you're underage the survey ends and it gives you the mora reward. Someone underage has to lie about their age at the beginning of the survey to actually fill out the survey.
Love it when the FTC does their dang job. Hate that this has to be wrapped up in "Think Of The Children" nonsense, but that's the dumb world we live in. Nothing can be done for the sake of the average consumer.
Because it is expected of the average consumer to have average intelligence. Gambling mechanics are designed to target vulnerable individuals. Most of those are children, teens, and young adults.
This is not only "think of the children", it is think of the consumer. It just so happens that children were caught in the crossfire, as they often are. I love this game but I can see why this game is appealing to children and dangerous to those children and their parents. Marketing often pit children against their parents, strictly for profit. Any game that can be seen as harmless by children has the potential to not be acknowledged of real dangers that exist in those games. Gambling is dangerous for adults, so it is even more dangerous for children that do not understand it.
while I agree with applying restrictions … I as a parent I will never understand how other parents allow this. My girl plays roblox and ain’t no way in hell she’s using any cc. all she gets is a card from walmart once in a blue moon.
This is the real solution... You should NOT have a CC linked to your child's account, and if you know you lack self-control, don't link it to yours either... Its ok to allow them to play, even spend a little money, but it should be rare and they should have to earn it...
Most parents are like you. The fringe cases where kids spends copious amounts of their parents money on a game are straight up statistical anomalies. The internet however has this odd way of making it seem like it's a more frequent occurrence than it actually is. That said, like someome above me mentioned, kids can be sneaky about it, but it still falls on the parents as well to monitor what their kids are asking them for money for and to show their parents what they spent it on as well. No responsible parent should just be giving their kids 20 bucks randomly for something their kid claims they want it for without also wanting their child to show them what they spent the money on.
So from my understanding, the lootbox seems to refer to the character banner and I believe that they view the fates as Keys to pull on the banners(lootboxes). But hey, we don't know the full picture until this is fully followed through.
Thanks yall, mainly wanted to comment this because of how it seemed to have reference loot boxes being the fates and not the banner itself in the video
The term "loot box" can not be applied to Genshin, it's a completely different thing from different games. (And I'm glad Genshin doesn't have any) Wishing system has always been rather transparent, and the vast majority of people only spend on Moon or BP. And there's nothing unfair or deceiving - what you see is what you get
Misrepresentation = "Come check out the new *boosted rates* for (character)". "Boosted rates" implies that the character is available at all times. In the promo texts that get sent out via email and hoyolab notifications it uses this language and do not acknowledge in the notifications that the characters are limited in time/availability.
@@raihanrusli2720 It's still a dumb way to word it. Saying something like "(character) now available for a limited time!" Or "Don't miss the rerun of (character)" would make more sense.
While I think most of this complaint is valid... I'm not sure how they DECEIVED anyone about the rates. The rates are written in the banner details and are accurate. But, as you said, almost any restriction on gacha systems is probably a good thing.
50 50 system me thinks. yes, the probability of you getting a 5 star is there, but it can be deceiving since the 5 star you'll get is not the one on the banner
@@Matthew-ij3zm Except .... there are communities that have collected data and calculated rates on Gacha's with a high degree of accuracy BEFORE they were required to disclose the rates. Those same people can EASILY check if the rates of any game are fake so why would a company waste their own time dealing with the potential consequences of lying about it. They're greedy not stupid.
@@Matthew-ij3zm we do - they have calculated the ACTUAL odds from player records and the stated odds are very close. they even calculated how the Capturing Radiance works and it's not exactly a 55/45 simple weighting (although the "consolidated odds" DOES come close to that number)
3:30 for real. when i got into genshin it took watching tons of videos and having it explained over and over all the mechanics of wishing in genshin (and gacha in general) especially when people threw around “win/lose 50/50” and i had no idea what that meant. i now have a great understanding of the wishing system but i definitely wasted a lot of wishes when i didnt.
Genshin's standard banner is one of the worst I have ever seen! Only Star Rail and other games copying hoyo are this bad. In other gachas I played you had some chance pulling limited characters from standard. I wasted 10-20 pulls before finding out Genshin's system.
@@ipsumlorem3076 If you've ever rented a movie digitally or paid money to listen to music digitally you've done the exact same thing. It's spending money on entertainment. You just don't value this particular form of entertainment. And to be fair, the 100+ dollars for one tiny piece of a video game is a ridiculous cost and a bad value proposition in my opinion, too. But the idea of buying a thing that is a digital good you use for entertainment being completely worthless isn't accurate. People do it all the time, just generally in smaller amounts.
dark patterns (fomo, misrepresentation, 50/50, multiple currencies) are weaved specifically to intercept and convolute human thought at a complex level (psychology, business, statistics); but when a company "simplifies" these patterns to a middle school algebra level of understanding (slot machine press button) it becomes more accessible and accepted (ie not predatory enough). The essence of gacha created a complex series where each step of trying to gamble is convoluted yet simple enough were people willingly give into the system rather than understand it (thinking is hard, boobas make me feel good) and its effects. History repeats and governments rein in predatory practice until they benefit from profits.
Even though Genshin is currently my favorite game, this should have happened far sooner. If EA got raked over the coals for loot boxes, then so should Hoyo.
@paulolugo7447 I don't think ea is worse than hoyo when it comes to lootboxes since hoyos entire business model is based off getting people addicted to gambling and worse off children as well.
mixed on this... The FTC statement was vaguer than a gacha banner lol. Never once felt like I was being 'deceived' by hoyo but than I'm an adult who does the math before spending money and I was raised by parents who would NEVER have allowed me access to their credit card. On the other hand, getting rid of intermediary virtual currency would be great! Beyond that, I'm gonna wait and see if sets some kind of precedence or if anything will even change beyond the fine print getting a little bigger. Plus, I'm not in the US so will I even get to see that much?!
lol true. Their statements are like that of politicians to confuse the average citizen. The irony. Still, I wish Hoyo had to pay more than 20 mil. Thats nothing to them.
it wasn't vague - they just didn't understand it and had some intern draw up the language. it's all just to grab a cut of the money that Hoyo are making. what is MORE worrying is that Hoyo can then turn it into "fixed pricing" and that will really kill f2p players.
@@digadeh They're probably happy to get anything, Hoyo gets a PR win for 20 mil and the US Government gets a pr win with the idiots who were deceived despite there being no deception. Hoyo could've fought and won because they have never deceived anyone, the odds are all there in black and white on every single banner and the cost is calculable with 3rd grade math. They also have never once used "dark-pattern" practices in their games. A lot of fly by night companies do that (and blizzard), but Hoyo never has and I played HI3 for a year before Genshin came out and have played every game since, since release.
All this amounts to is Hoyo being more clear on not only what you get, but how likely it is to get it. A net benefit for all parties frankly. Not to mention the free 10 pull we'll be getting as "Apologies".
Not so fast. They cannot sell crystals to children under 16 without parental consent. That is major. Does that mean age verification for the bargain shop?
If what they want is hoyo to show real monetary value of things, then the same applies to rewards and they can justify everything by saying, we gift like millions to players, since it is actual currency we handle.The ppl behind the fine are so stupid that they are implicity allowing market share and micro transactions outside the games, the very same problem that cod has and that has destroyed families over the years.
To be honest I'm decent at math and once I actually understood the system, I know exactly how to budget for characters and it's not really gambling to me, because there is an eventual guarantee. I think of true gambling as possibly spending endlessly without ever, ever being guaranteed what you're gambling for. But tbh I'm adjusted to the predatory gacha system and I think I've been brainwashed a bit to think it's more normal/reasonable than it is. I kind of forgot until this video how confusing the crystals -> primos -> fates system can actually be. If I wasn't an ultra responsible spender I could have gotten in trouble with it myself. So I applaud jello for saying it like it is when it comes to this issue. I think gachas have probably gotten away with way too much on the "but it's in the fine print" excuse.
Aside from those that show up in the shop rotation (or lantern rite) there is never a guarantee for a specific 4* character. You could in theory (though astronomically unlikely) wish thousands of times for say Heizou for example and not see a single copy of him even when on rate up. So I'd say it is still gambling. A personal example, way back in 1.4 I ended up with c2 Childe before seeing a single copy of Rosaria (her first rate up banner). Granted the odds of that are technically lower than pulling two 5*s in a single ten pull.
In a similar boat, I'm very into math, and one of the first things I did when I realized I actually liked Genshin enough to spend a little was calculate out that Welkins - by far - was the best deal of the bunch in-game. Still have never bought and probably never will buy genesis crystals directly. Just... doesn't seem worth it to me - even with the bonuses. After a while, I just got used to saving up primos to try my best to guarantee my most wanted 5* - while assuming the worst luck. (Just lost 50/50 today on Citlali's banner to C1 Mona - which... not terrible, but not ideal either). I think I'll save the guarantee for the rerun banner coming up. (Also set up a personal goal to myself to collect the Fontaine cast since I REALLY like them, and the Archons).
If you just assume a character costs the worst case scenario and anything less than that is a surprise sale price, like a responsible human being, it isn't hard. I kinda hate this big brother - legislating responsibility crap. It shouldn't be a businesses responsibility to explain currency to people. I don't want a 5 minute lecture on dollars and cents and the relative value of goods every time I walk into Walmart and this is the reductio-ad-absurdum of this entire legislation. It's kinda pathetic that education has fallen so far that a lot of people are onboard with this nonsense.
@ Yes, exactly. I always budget around 160 pulls for a character and if I get them in less it's a nice discount. But I politely disagree with the "legislating responsibility crap" statement, if you're implying that no one should go after gachas for their purposefully confusing and predatory practices. Yes, responsibility ultimately falls on the individual, but why in the world should there be zero responsibility for the multibillion dollar companies? Lol. I'm gonna agree with jello on this one.
Maybe I’m dense, but I feel like the only major changes that fixes a lot of this is you change genesis crystal packs to primos, and then the pack tells you how many wishes it’s worth. Then on the wish screen, there’s always blatant prompt on the banner that would automatically pop up for new players that explains the wish system in clear terms. I’m decent at math but even I can admit there’s no to overload a player with text and percentages. A simple tldr with an example would do. Also while I totally agree that children and young teens should have more protection against gacha system, isn’t more of a problem that consoles and PC’s so easily save the info and purchase without some kind of mandatory password set up? Even if a parent is crazy enough to allow a child to play something that has their credit card purchases, maybe…those purchases should require a password every time something is bought? If the kid knows the password, that’s the parent’s fault. At some level you have to watch your kids.
@@SmartyPantsDash They could just sell packs and costumes for real $. Like $20 for a skin on sale or $30 for a full price one. If they want to bundle it with welkin then you can buy 3 months of welkin + skin of choice for $45 or whatever. It'd cost the same amount it does now, you'd just have to actually look at the $ amount.
@@SmartyPantsDashI don't think it needs to. The Conversation rate between primos and gensis is exactly 1 to 1 so they can just show the amount of pulls you are getting just on the top up screen.
They way they're equating the character banner to a loot box, wouldn't "Prohibited from allowing children under 16 to purchase lootboxes in their video games without parental consent" potentially mean kids under 16 wouldn't be allowed to wish at all without parental consent? Or would "purchase" imply they're not allowed to use real life money only, but primos/fates would still be OK? The wording is so silly, surely someone in the FTC has played or at least has a family member who's played a gacha game before, but I guess not. Also as a someone who has kids that play Genshin, I don't understand anyone who would just let their kids have access to a credit card like that. I've told my kids how much 10-pull would cost in real money and they agree it's not worth it.
You do you but even 'simulated gambling' instills gambling as a habit. As for what will change with the game, it seems most likely that they will just remove genesis crystals from the shop and allow purchase of primo gems directly (and only on the NA server).
@@Nowaylarry You're forgetting costumes. Removing Genesis crystals would require them to change the mechanism they use to make those into real money purchases.
@@effortlessfury Yeah you can. Soft pity is not advertised so we don5know the actual odds. So if you think soft pity starts at 65 pulls, I believe it starts at 75 and they actually start at 85, the lack of actual clear confirmation will change how we make decisions. I'm at 55 pulls and believe I need 20 more to get to soft pity so I buy 20 pulls but surprise I need 10 more to actually get those odds so I lose my money and can't even complain. Worse if you think the pity is at 65. On top of that there's the new capture radiance system that supposedly makes the drop rate a (consolidated) 55/45 and you think that's just better chances when it's actually a hell of a lot more complicated than that but was never explained and instead people online had to figure it out. You're not suing for the odds being better or worse, you're suing for the fact that they're unclear or downright deceptive.
@ No I really don't think you can sue for them giving you better odds. They don't tell you about soft pity, so you would assume it doesn't exist. Under that assumption, you will always have odds that are as good as stated or better. I think the "deceptive" aspect here is that people are taking the consolidated probability as the actual per-roll probability. They need to make it clearer what consolidated probability is, so that people don't believe their per-roll chance is 1.6%.
@ My way of seeing it is that people who are not online and don't know about the soft pity system will constantly think they "got lucky" or that it was early this could lead to them making purchasing decisions based on that 90 guaranteed A simple example would be a player is at 55 pulls and the banner is going away in 3 days the player then purchases the 100 dollar top up instead of the 50 dollar top up believing that the 24 pulls received will not be enough I believe the existence of soft pity and it's rates would be something that the government should force
. So how much money in USD is 1423 primo gems I don't know any 12 to 16 yo that can math that in 10 seconds. You don't even buy promos you buy a separate currency(Genesis crystals) that you convert to promos. That you then spend on a fate that is technically a loot box.
2$ for one pull. If you're extremely unlucky and hit 90 pity somehow that's 180$. 2$ for a pull that has a 9/10 chance of being a random 3 star weapon is crazy.
It's refreshing to see you mention that you're complicit to some degree in these issues. Lots of content creators/influencers act like they're innocent bystanders, but in reality by making content they're promoting the game and subsequently their monetization practices. Genshin would have seen it's staggering success back in 2020 (and all that followed) if it wasn't for content creators.
@@rickmel-q7m This is not the gotcha you think it is, it is very obviously a false equivalence. Video Game content creators have way more control over the content they cover vs whether an American citizen/resident pays taxes. But even though you clearly asked this question in bad faith, I'll do my best to give my opinion on it... Americans, generally speaking, have a history of electing warmongers. There are lots of Americans that disagree with their government's imperialist M.O. but, functionally speaking, they stopped really protesting war in the late 2000s. With that context, looking at the present, in my opinion, Americans have been very passive at responding to their elected President's threat's to annex three territories. There is so much they could be doing like protesting and putting pressure on their local governments to push back. Complicit is a strong term in this case, but I think American citizens are, to some degree, culpable for how their country interacts with foreign entities. Anyways, hope you're enjoying Natlan I guess.
@ I just realized this answer might have been a little too much for someone like you so let me summarize it using terms that are within your grasp... Yeah, they are.
i think some of the comments are missing the forest for the trees wrt the cost of pulls being 'unclear'. obviously you can calculate it if you take the time to, but obfuscating a purchase in layers so that you end up spending imaginary tokens instead of the currency you recognize is a just a straight up psychological tactic. most games with microtransactions do it of course but i think it's particularly noticeable in gacha
Yep. The more steps there are between the real currency ($) and the product you receive, the less the brain is aware of the actual cost. In Genshin it's real currency -> Genesis crystals -> Primogems -> wishes -> chance for a result. If you're somewhat in control of your impulses, you'll check your pity, calculate how many wishes you'd need approximately to guarantee what you want and then check the price of the package that you need to buy to get there. But if you're more impulsive/addicted and/or you miscalculated/got unlucky and decide to top up again, it can be very easy to lose track of how much you spent, especially with all the conversion rates inbetween. If they shortened the chain to real currency -> wishes -> chance for a result, that would take away 2 conversion steps and more directly link the real currency to the product you received. These types of practices don't prey on people who are in control and spend wisely. They prey on people who are looking for the dopamine hit/instant gratification, or people who don't have a grasp on the value of money yet (kids). Or in the case of MMO's, people who are susceptible to peer pressure. The people who are not in the most rational state of mind.
I think the biggest issue is, the company should not "require" any player to grab a calculator or an excel sheet to caculate his odds and risks. Just telling "in worst case, you'd have to spend $ to obtain your desired character" would help a lot of ppl for what they are about to go for.
@@logikx1325No reason to use “that logic” near where I work: the Internet Café, bar+arcade, escape room, and at least 10 restaurants all went out of business already. They were hit hard by work from home and many not coming back even now.
All in all, it's good for the addicts. However, it should be accompanied by a) teaching Americans reading comprehension and mathematics (tbh, it's not that hard to understand how much a character would cost in the worst-case scenario), b) parents actually parenting and not letting their kids play random games and spend money without supervision.
But if you want to go a bit more in depth in studying the cost as a random variable you need to have studied a university level probability course. The reality is that the system is obscure. For example soft pity mechanics are declared nowhere on the banner information, and to find probability and cumulative distribution functions you need to use online resources that themselves declare are working on assumptions.
This. Confusing exchange rates ???? Because 1:1 and then 160:1 is SO confusing right. As for the confusing on cost - there is a simple solution that I know Hoyo will simply not impalement - making the purchase amounts correspond to exact numbers of pulls.
@@RoninBlackwing the funny part about this situations rn... ALL GACHA game use this system, there no gacha game that sell a 1 to 1 currency to match the pulls... Genshin getting sued cuz they making alot money out of Americans and how populor the game are. other game been using this system for years but never been an issue as ingakit5381 said just read.
@@davidebic I've just check and actually the soft pity is there under the name of consolidated probability. and the hard pity is already in the description too.
There are also pressure from the Chinese government to remove bonus incentives for first time purchase. The thing about that first time purchase incentive is that it obfuscate the real cost of those many pulls for the first time. If you're unlucky, then the sunk cost mentality kicks in and you now HAD to purchase the more expensive variety to actually get the character/weapon, something that some would not do if the first time purchase was that expensive.
@@hungry_rabbit9032 Except it's not a double bonus because you still get a percentage on subsequent purchases, too. There is not a time where you ever get 6400 gems for the big bundle.
@@hungry_rabbit9032 What you might not realize is that they might be forced to lower the price of primogems so that it is the same value as the first time purchase or less people will be inclined to buy into it at all. And without that, there is no sunk cost mentality to buy more at higher price.
@lukee7442 not directly, but it's law/government related. And people have been pointing out the "they're only doing this because it's a chinese company". But yes, I know, at the very least the arguments make more sense than "chinese spy" or whatever.
Ahh don’t you love our American government banning anything it can’t have power over Regardless tho I doubt they’d ban Genshin just for the fact that it’s so under the dinosaurs in offices radar that they probably don’t even know about it
If TikTok’s ban was because of safety they would’ve banned it long ago when Trump wanted. But they’re banning it now for political reasons that I can’t talk about because RUclips will remove my comment…lol. So they probably won’t ban gacha games for “safety”
Well, yet another proof for how there's way too many currencies in the game. A single type of fate could also have been enough, but we all know that the segregation into event and standard banners works into Hoyos favour.
@@Linealothe issue is the fact that there are plenty of other gachas that have multiple different types of currencies in game, I’d think it’s only fair that every other gacha gets the same restriction at this point.
It is overall a good thing but when you have companies like EA and Valve who make way more money than hoyo, it’s kinda obvious why the FTC is targeting hoyo in particular.
Yep, definitely has nothing to do with the stuff surrounding tiktok and all the other bipartisan anti-china bullshit coming out of congress. We are coming off 4 years of a historically unpopular president who knowingly funded a genocide and the idiot boomers running shit think they can distract people with "china bad" bullshit.
@@arocomisgamusclademork1603love how yall are avoiding what op mentioned by arguing other shit. EA, Valve, Activision/Blizzard, OTHER AMERICAN COMPANIES DO THIS SHIT TOO. SIMILAR TO THEM HOING AFTER TIK TOK OVER EVERY OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA OWNED BY AMERICANS. Don't be obtuse about it
I agree it should be clear that the 100$ gets you not even 50 pulls. Gacha is a business model that allows the game to be free but preys on noobs to spend absurd amounts of money to win the lottery That is a highly volatile spending practice that is not suited for everyone. Most don't realize that, if you choose to spend any money on this game, essentially for the price of a Netflix monthly sub (welkin + pass) you get everything you need
@@mj6582 this is it & what should be made transparent for new players: there’s cheaper ways to get everything you need if you’re patient & don’t mind grinding. Through spending on welkin & the battle pass alone + doing all the free primogems events I can, I’ve been able to get literally every single 5* from 5.1 to 5.3, that’s around $30 USD for 6 characters. & tbh I could’ve easily skipped Lyney but I was new. People just need to learn how to spend wisely & understand that you don’t need every single character, but the game should also make it transparent.
i think a lot of people dont realize how many young people, those too young to be in control of their own spending and money, too young to fully grasp concepts as winning a 50/50, rateup, or basic gambling, play genshin as well as. the things presented in the article are valid concerns and criticism. players outside of content creators and adults exist too.
@@NonMeta_ Yeah if I had kids, I wouldn't be letting them play any gatcha game (or I try my best to not expose them to it). And if they did want to play a game like Genshin, I would ask them if they'd rather spend money on a video game that they'll eventually stop playing or something they rather have that's more permanent. It's all about diversion.
@@MultiMVirus literally the reason all my friends enjoyed playing genshin when it released but stop playing not even a week after. I started playing in 5.0 and almost dropped the game when i lost my first 5* to 50/50
it drives alway to many people who would actually spent time in game and even buy regular welkin or bp's, but don't see a point in doing so when the regard you get for the time/money invested is a Qiqi
8:03 I think they should just sell skins for a cash value and totally get rid of Genesis Crystals. They should be required to directly sell Intertwined Fates.
That would make skins a lot more expensive. Do you have any idea how many of us out there who abuse the yearly double Genesis Crustal and the Welkin Moon to get skins in the cheapest possible way?
@@bootao1671 okay but primogems aren't 1 to 1 with pulls which is the issue the FTC has, makes it seem more valuable by having a higher number than what it's providing.
@@MultiMVirusthis right here, people are so addicted to gambling that they’re trying to justify being played when there are solutions as simple as this
The problem I see is that this would just make the game mlre expensive, meaning without Genesis Crystals (itls that their name?) you couldn't buy yourself a cool skin passively through some Welking Moon
8:16 they ARE misrepresenting the lootbox odds. Early on when the game was new someone in China did calculation and found that the odds didnt match what was stated and then they did more calculations with more data and they discovered that after a certain point it became more likely to get a 5 star (what we now call soft pity) and that the reason it says consolidated rate instead of just directly saying x% is becasue it is less likely before soft pity and much more likely after soft pity and the actual number is not given just the consolidated number. This is how soft pity was discovered and it is abosolutely misleading and very evident to regular players after so many years that this is how it works across all their games. To be clear I think the FTC lucked into this one but if soft pity was ever brought up in court as misleading Hoyo are very likely to lose imo. There is a chance this ruling could forcce them to get rid of the condolidated percentage language when stating the rates which could mean early 5 stars go up and soft pity disappears. I hope this gets more ddiscussion since I dont think many know about it.
A lot of what the FTC alleges, and the terminology they're using, implies *heavily* that they did not do much research on the game before slapping an allegation and a fine on it.
@@azuarcCan you explain what the difference is? The only notable difference I know of is that gachas usually give you some sort of guarantee while lootboxes don't.
@@silentpeppers47 nonsense - if it's for the documents, all the more reason to understand the situation ACCURATELY. how can you make a regulation when you cannot differentiate between loot box and the hero ?
There are two practices I would like to see removed not only from Hoyo games, but all live service games. The first is the convert currency to another currency to another currency to buy what you want. The other is where if you want to buy an item in the shop, the currency bundles are always either a little more or a little less than what you need, so you always wind up buying more than you need to get the item.
A "loot box" in Genshin = a single pull. On average it costs about US$175.00 to guarantee acquiring a single 5 star of your choosing; this figure factors in losing one 50/50 in the process so could be far less if you're really lucky. So, a C6 5-star character costs on average US$1,225.00 and does not include their signature weapon. Double that figure if you want an R5 copy of that weapon for a grand total of around US$2,500.00 or thereabouts. For the sake of comparison, a really decent gaming laptop to play that character on would normally cost (far) less than that. Yeah, so Genshin is ridiculously expensive. Then again, one night in Vegas could cost about the same as a C6 5-star... but then you'll also be getting champagne and caviar... or it's also possible for it all to be "free" if you're really lucky at the slot machine which ofc doesn't happen with Genshin.
Mentioning things like C6 and R5 is absolutely pointless because those are only for the absolute whales out there. No character in the game requires anything more than C0 to function. You don't even need their weapons. The game isn't expensive, people just don't know how to save.
@@infiniteaj8688Well, yes, such characters as Risley, Hu Tao and Dehya do not exist, whose advantages that should be in the c0 version are behind the first constellation
I bet some viewers click on this thinking that the government will force Hoyo to remove 50/50, reduce pull costs, give more handouts, 5-stars every 10 pulls, and so on.
It's so stupid. It's like pretending the 5 stars have any value at all and we need the government to come in and set the true value of a 5 star. They are all WORTHLESS. This is entertainment only!
I'm gonna be honest i'm someone who doesn't read instructions or tutorials much. Genshin was also my first gacha game so i had no idea how it worked or how wishes worked at the start. I did see the offers but i initially thought that every 1 blue cristal thingy (idk whats it's called) was worth 160 primos aka 1 wish. So for the longest time i thought that buying the 110 euro package was for getting like 8000 pulls or so. Thank god i was f2p for the first year of playing cuz i would've feel scammed
Even at a cursory glance you can tell that genesis crystals converted 1-1 with primogems, nothing suggests that genesis crystals would be worth more What you’re talking about is not the same as what this case is about. If you thought a single genesis crystal converted somehow equaled a pull even tho it converts to the exact amount in primos for a pull then that would’ve been on you.
@@Janedoe-z2fi think u missunderstood my comment. Back then i didn't earn enough to even think abt spending money on a game but i did look at the offers cuz i was currious. I never looked at the conversion rates ar anything i just assumed it was like 1 - 160 cuz i just couldn't imagine spending 2 euro in a game for 1 pull that just didn't make sense. Like i said genshin was my first gacha so i wasn't used to those type of horrible rates
@@Janedoe-z2f Deceptive Marketing is in the tittle of the video, and the one who made the coment said that *IF* he spent any money on genshin when he start playing, he would have felt scammed, because hoyo explains things like shit, so fu** you it is the same case
About 3:15 , "HoYoverse deceived players about the odds of winning particular sought-after 'five-star' loot box prizes and how much it would cost to open loot boxes to win the prizes". I'm quite sure in this context, a "loot box" is a pull and a "particular sought-after 'five-star' loot box prize" is a limited 5 star character or weapon.
If you think about it, the amount of money I've spent last year on Genshin...I don't even wanna see the total But I do only spend money if I enjoy the game and feel justified so reward them for doing a good job keeping me entertained 🤷♂️ my personal take
I feel the same way! I finally made a spreadsheet and the amount was more than I thought but not that bad/out of my affordability. The F2P argument sometimes (while I get it too) makes me feel like the equivalent of getting a Zelda game every 6+ weeks and not paying the $60 for a new game.
Same here! I actually want to spent money on the game - but only as a sign of my gratitude of making good content or characters. But whenever I keep failing the 36* in Spiral Abyss (actually every time) despite being AR60 with many C6 Supports, it feels like they wanna run the P2W poilitcs on me, which is exactly why I stopped spending on this game anymore.
There are a *lot* of gacha/mobile games they have grounds to go after if what Hoyo was doing could be considered "deceptive". I do think they should completely clear about what the current chances of getting a 5* are accounting for the various pity mechanics, though.
So, parents arent monitoring their kids and want their money back, is all I've heard. Ive been playing since 1.2. Ive been keeping track of my spending. Ive spent a total of $200 on this game through welkin moons and ive been able to get every 5☆ character I wanted. Sure every business has shady predatory practices. But at what point does the customer take personal responsibility?
well this type of companies are making incentives to spend money.basically they are TEMPTING instead of just GIVING access. So most of the bad faith would be on the company
this. All i ever here is wahhhh wahhh predatory this preadtory that. Bc fuck reposnibility and accountability. A child is not supposed to have access to credit cards???? And lets not pretend this is gonna make children and teens stop spending on Genshin. If they had access to their parents money, they will be using their parents accounts to make said purchases. So the parental controls wont block anything??? They just wanted to sue Genshin. Where is the Wuwa Lawsuit? they copied their monteray system 1:1 so?? This change does little to nothing for the majority of players. Unless they start givng way more rewards, idc about this.
Not sure how you equate loot box with acquainted fates. The loot box is the banner. A loot box has to be something that gives you random things with varying rarities. Think of it like opening a treasure chest or defeating a boss in an MMORPG. A loot box is like a treasure chest filled with random items, some good some bad. An acquainted fate is a virtual currency. The press release you're reading even makes the distinction between virtual currency and loot box, so these things are not the same. You don't "open" an acquainted fate to obtain an 5 star, you "open" a banner and obtain objects of varying rarity. The banner is the loot box.
I personally like the gacha system. I spend almost nothing in the game, and take the resource planning as part of the game itself. But I understand that most players wont be able to deal with it in a healthy way
Yupp. Also i think the only thing that will change will be, that hoyo puts a sort star symbol next to the banner (like the fate point) stating that hey your next 5☆ is your character
@@iikendollGacha has never been fair, but i also think that in a game like this, account progression (including getting pull for gacha) is basically one of it's gameplay system, and there are many people that play specifically for this reason, it is predatory but IMO you should already know what you're getting into, tho i guess unlike FGO community that always warn you that it's hell you're walking into, genshin community just promote their game like it's your average 60$ game
@@deonardomendez9426 that would not address the fact that Hoyo has done adequate due diligence to ensure they were not selling to a minor. To comply with COPPA, companies must obtain "verifiable parental consent," meaning they need to take reasonable steps to confirm that the person providing consent is actually the child's parent. A star will not do this. Hoya is not allowed to sale crystals to anyone under 16 without parental consent by this judement.
I'd agree if... the fan talk baaed patterns and predictions actually made sense....in other words you could actually plan your savings. But alas... HOYOs totally inconsistent rerun schedule makes this moot.
Not to mention 5050, which is like paying for a Steak dinner then getting Salad instead… The banner shows the promotional character only to just give you a Day 1 standard character.
THIS IS THE REAL ISSUE being a fan of these Content Creators, is difficult, because we never take into account the real addiction to FOMO prevalent in the teen-spere
So only Hoyoverse?? All gacha games do this exact same thing lol... they been coming for gacha games for over a decade now and it hasnt changed 1 bit... you have to buy genesis crystals to convert to primos to get fates... same way you have to buy casino chips to gamble at a casino... If the individual isnt paying attention to how much they spend, why is that Hoyoverse or even gacha gamings fault... There will be no changes, this isnt the first time they have been attacked for the gacha mechanics... and now there are even more games with this exact model, pretty much every single one since Genshin... Hell Summoners War is still going without even having a pity system for 2 decades now... you can literally pull hundreds and hundreds without getting a single 5 star... Theres no 4 star pity either... you can pull 100 times and get ZERO 4/5 stars... SW isnt asking for the age of the player before selling the "loot boxes"... the exchange rate is very clear... Genesis/primos are 1 for 1... you get 80 primos per dollar (8080/$100=80.8)... it cost 160 per pull, so each pull is $2.00 (rounded up)... They will not put the characters up for sale, they will not put the fates up for sale, at most they will rid genesis crystals and allow you to directly buy primos, which are already a 1 for 1... So that will change NOTHING... Gambling is bad for those with an addiction, but anything for an impulsive person with little self awareness is bad... EVERY company feed off some sort of need/desire... No I dont agree with how easy it is to purchase genesis crystals... It only takes me a few clicks and boom I can do 5 more 10 pulls... I have self control and plan how much ima spend over a period of time... i get the character or not, it is what it is...
It is a massively popular game from a foreign nation that the US has strained relations with (on a governmental scale) so it is an easy target. It will have more impact on the gacha industry than going after a smaller game. Let me preface my next statement by mentioning that I've been playing Genshin since launch (still play) and have spent some money. Gacha IS gambling. It uses the same systems, tactics and costs real money. They don't let kids play at a casino and frankly someone under the age of 18 shouldn't even be able to make an account for a gacha game. That is a change that needs to happen (though there isn't a full proof way to do that). Even if you are f2p these kinds of games still normalize the act of gambling to the player. That in itself can mess with the impulse control of a still developing brain. I do agree that the most likely change will just be removal of genesis crystals (and probably only for the NA server).
@@Nowaylarry the rules in the article literally said you cant sell lootboxes without providing an option to buy them directly with money.... seems like they just want to shit on hoyo for the sake of shitting on hoyo
you are trying to vouch for a billion dollar company that still benefits off people's addiction. This game exposes children to gambling and needs to be regulated, just like how casinos are regulated to limit children's access to it.
@silentpeppers47 Thats... kind of the point of gacha games. To profit and hook players via 'the grind'. Its shitty but atleast it isnt as bad as other games like pjsk for example, who dont even have things like pity systems to prevent people from spending too much. Its merely a slightly less shitty evil than the many other evils out there. Ofc the system is insanely fucked up and nowhere as fair as the system in other hoyoverse games, which are much more generous and dont force you to gamble, but its not like the devil made genshin themself. If the FTC wants to crack down on gacha games, good for them. But atleast go for every gacha game instead of the big one with foreign relations, while also doing little to no research on the actual game gacha system. The reason why I say this is that its insanely obvious from the article wording that the FTC did nothing to truly look into Genshin, and just wanted to fine a game with foreign relations (or some FTC guy wanted a raise.)
It’s not really for the faith of the people, if it was then there would have been crack on subscription models and inclusion of more popular games i.e. COD, CS2, LOL and more. Though, I’m not against it. It’s just disappointing that it isn’t full scope.
Roblox (majority of games have lootboxes), and all major Gacha’s has lootboxes and they have yet to get in any trouble. My guess that they’re targeting the major earning gacha companies and saying “It’s for the children”
here's a suggestion: go study a little bit about predatory game monetization, dark patterns and addiction before you make such an ignorant comment. but seriously do real research, spend a day reading scientific papers on it. you'll see just how much evil crap goes into the monetization of this game. every single mechanic and design choice in it is tailored to manipulate the user into spending more money than they would otherwise ever even consider wasting in a single game. dark patterns like hiding monetary value behind arbitrary currency conversions plays a huge role in that. so don't downplay it while insulting a whole country out of the blue for no reason. you're not in a great position to mock other people's intelligence with a comment like that.
Nah, they are punishing them because they are a Chinese company and the game is popular. I guess it is also for the COPPA violations. That said, gacha games (and games with gambling) should require a valid credit card (not pre-payed) in order to even make an account. That would at least cut down on the number of kids playing them (though it wouldn't stop them all).
@@GraveUypo There's no currency conversion to hide anything behind, Genesis crystals are 1:1 with primogems. There literally isn't a conversion that the player has to do in that case. The only conversion in this entire process is primogems to fates, which is also an extremely simple 160:1 or 1600:10. You can just look at the shop screen and ask "how many times does 160 (or 1600) go into this number I'm looking at" to understand how many fates you're getting. If you want to talk about evil monetization, there is so much worse out there than 1:1 premium currencies.
It would be funny if the direct purchase of a character or constellation will actually bring in more money for them. It’s like the usb-c standard here in Europe, where apple was forced to ditch the lightning cable and they themselves called it a improvement, but they were actually forced to do it
I’ve said it for a while, but Gatcha games in general should be rated as Adult by content rating people like the ESRB. This article doesn’t say anything in particular about how Hoyo marketed to children specifically other than that because the game is colorful and cartoon-y that it automatically makes it a children’s product and that just doesn’t sit well with me. The game has content where you can gamble with real money, that makes it an adult product and should be restricted as such by regulatory agencies. I think cracking down on Hoyo’s scumminess is only a half-measure that doesn’t fully take care of the problem.
Its not Cartoony necessarily Its Anime and if you think anime is for kids then well I don't think we have to debate any further. Although, More solid argument (instead of 'cartoony feel') would be that game itself is rated 13+ on playstore.
@ Generally speaking, I don’t think art style should determine content rating. I’m not sure if you’re arguing if favor of Genshin’s 13+ rating, but to be clear on my stance: Genshin should be an 18+ game due to its gambling content.
@@Shane_A_M I agree with you 100%. I was just saying this recently. Also, in the last year or so, a lot of the story content in the game has gotten...dark. Not things I would consider appropriate for the 12+ rating it has in my country. I'm talking things like suicide and child sacrifice etc. They were always there, but they've been increasing dramatically.
No. It should be M/16+ rating for gachas with pity, and either 18+/AO or completely banned for those that don't. But all the big big gachas without pity are US, so... (Murica being scummier than its competition and not wanting to regulate itself, what a surprise...)
iirc the current system EA and Ubisoft use is the result of a prior similar case. So maybe it's only a matter of time before this applies to all of these corps
@@halahmilksheikh its funny because gacha game exists for years, and hoyoverse is not the only gacha game out there. surely not bias toward some party.
All games, items and characters that are digital should require a clear End of Service statement/disclosure that explains how companies plan to handle consumer purchases once they no longer support their product. For example if you bought a bunch of characters, skins, etc. in Genshin but one day Hoyo decides they will no longer support the game they need to clearly state what will happen upfront. So before a user can make an in-game digital purchase a company should disclose what will happen to those digital purchases End of Service, even if the statement is as simple as "Users will loose all access to characters, items, and playability when Company announces End of Service." Another idea to reduce obfuscation to younger players is that for any loot box percentage odds less than 1% the odds need to be spelled out, for example if you have a 0.1% chance of rolling something it should say "player's odds are 1 in 1000 (one in one thousand)." Lastly they should not allow FOMO offers for games/skins/items that disappear at end of service. If they allow a player to collect several copies of the character they have to be available permanently on release until End of Service so as not to entice players into further obfuscated gambling.
I'm pretty sure that 'not actually owning anything you buy in-game' is in the user agreement. That more or less covers EoS. Not that anyone reads EULAs. They are more forgotten than the character by the same name.
@@Nowaylarry Of course they cover the fact you are paying for licenses to digital items in the genshin/Hoyo Terms of Service. The problem is noone reads them because the first thousand words of the ToS are defining parties and legal terms and then it's another 3 thousand words of legal text before it discusses in-game purchases. If every time a user went to spend real money in game they had to read a succinct message "Company does not have an official EoS date, and any digital items purchased will disappear along with access to the game after EoS with no compensation." That might get people used to thinking about these games and the money the spend on them differently. Forcing companies to make clear statements upfront also lets people know how long the game is expected to be supported and what's going to happen when it's no longer supported. In the past you could buy games and expansions physically, it would be up to you to maintain the hardware and media in order to continue to playing whenever they were no longer in a physical store. Now, much of that is content is controlled by someone else and it's not clear what EoS looks like until it happens. Users are gambling with their digital items as to whether they will be patched for offline mode, carried forward in some sort of backwards compatibility, or just outright no longer accessible. Some games have had their server code released or reverse engineered to continue to let people play on publicly maintained servers. Anyways All of those options are OK for a company to pursue, even just straight up shutting a game down, but they should be required to state up front what their plan is and it shouldn't be buried thousands of words deep in legalese.
Good. Genshin is one of the biggest games out there. I hope they are going after the other games that are doing this but if this causes some immediate self-regulation I'm good with that too. Pretty small slap on the wrist considering how much they've made through this sleaziness though.
we should stop playing games like genshin, who could be one of the best games ever created by mankind, but is deliberately made worse is certain aspects, in order to milk money from costumers
I calculated it roughly by the 60 Genesis crystal: You need 160 primos for one pull, 60 crystal costs, ~$1 (differences from country and currency. So i will use $1 as an base) that means you're spending $2,66 per pull. If we are going with the worst case you need 180 pull to get the current banner character so we're taking the 2,66×180 = $478,8 per limited 5 star if you are losing every 50/50 and having 0 pitty. The cost also works for Star Rail and ZZZ with their currency. But as you can see, it costs a lot of money if you're unlucky, and those games are basically gambling at that point.
I also did the calculations, and the rates actually differ a little based on which top up you chose (best bargain is with the 1980gc at $2.43 per pull, saving you about $42 on the worst outcome) but I agree that the rates are bad overall
The worst thing is that I can kind of understand those players If we compare farming the primos to afford a random 5* to a real job, then getting a random 5* is like working full time for a week (35-40h) while being paid about $3.66/h. It's understandable how many people who probably already have full-time jobs would rather just pay for the characters even though they are so expensive.
they should improve the rates honestly, let people get more characters and let dolphins get constellations. pulling on a limited banner should guarantee the limited character and later pulls after obtaining the limited character will have 5050 chances for standard
they never got rid of daily farm for specifics materials for char/weapon upgrade, they will *NEVER* do something that benefits players but don't improve their cash flow
8:32 They are technically misrepresenting odds since it's unclear how their "consolidated probabilities" are calculated and often diverge from community polled statistics. The capturing radiance in particular states a consolidated probability of 55% but the real rate is consistently less than that without exceptions. It should hover above and below that number between patches if 55% is the true average. They should just release wish statistics as public knowledge for transparency. The full mechanics of the pity system should also be explicitly stated with full transparency, like how they linearly ramp-up the odds at some point, or how the full probability network of the capturing radiance works. This shouldn't be left as community work. An unsuspecting customer is likely to overspend if they rely solely on in-game information, even if we assume all the numbers they report are 100% accurate. Knowing just the average probabilities still hides your current probabilities.
That's the only real argument for deceptive marketing I could see here, since the odds for capturing radiance and for soft pity are never stated in game. The rest is pretty explicitly laid out for the player. As for your first point, the requirement has never been for them to show you their work in how they get the probability, they're just required to tell you what that probability is.
@@danielhounshell2526 except that it isn't explicitly laid out for the players. Your odds of getting the character from the banner are never show, for instance. The show odds are just for 5*, then you also have to win a 50/50 to get said char
@@joaovictorrodrigueskosugi6375 They're very upfront about 50/50s though, so that phrasing isn't deceptive. You know 50/50s exist going in, and you know the odds of getting a 5 star character. That's about as upfront as it gets, honestly. They could certainly state it more explicitly, but the way it is, it's difficult to argue it being deceptive.
FTC is being wayy to vague in this. Theyre just throwing rules at us without telling us which rules hoyo broke and how. Just because they crack down on crime doesn't mean they can be opaque.
I love your videos, and I really appreciate the fact that you take the time to make them. I've learned a lot from you throughout all of your many videos. Thank you!
Great video, as always! For those who are saying "they should've gone after x or y," as Jello Impact mentions, consider that many gacha-game developers will see this and adjust their policies in line. It is a better cost proposition for the US to go after one big player and get concession, than to spread suits out among all. As a result, if the deep pockets of Hoyo cannot overcome this enforcement, it would be unwise for a lower-grossing gacha to ignore this outcome. It is therefore likely others will adopt these requirements to avoid the cost of litigation and settlement. 20 million may not be "big" for hoyo, but it is for many in this space. Thank you, Jello Impact, for the news. Your channel gets better with every post.
Because that worked when they did it to EA. That's Rhetorical because it didn't worked when they did it EA as EA still does the same scummy shit that it was fined for to this day.
Unfortunately, what all this is likely to mean is that the price for characters is going to go up. Like, WAY up. That's not going to matter much to the whales, but to the dolphins it's going to be urksome, and for the free-to-plays it's going to be a disaster. Imagine seeing a price tag of $300 for a Furina constellation. The ftp now has to save longer to get that single character they've been waiting for and have to pass on anything else. And this FTC settlement isn't going to get Hoyo to stop being manipulative with their banner schedules. If anything, the manipulation will get worse to make players feel like they're missing out if they don't pull on a given character *right now*. Need I remind players how long Shenhe and Kokomi haven't been on a banner? Will the Duke ever get a second rerun if you skip him in 5.4? Rerun cycles might be extended to encourage spending out of fear the player might miss out on getting a certain character within a reasonable timeframe. The whole issue of limited time rewards is going to have to be addressed at some point, because that is the whole foundation of the overspending problem in Genshin and other similar titles.
nah the only thing that'll change is probably removing genesis crystals and letting you buy primogems directly. That and rewriting the banner details to be more clear to the uninitiated. The changes will probably only effect the NA server as well.
@@Nowaylarry I'd view the removal of Genesis Crystals as a good step towards greater transparency. (And it's a pain that you can buy outfits only with this currency.) I just fear that prices are going to be raised to make up for the expected loss in revenue. Not that I use them, but I wonder if third party Genesis vendors like Lootbar are going to be affected by these changes. Quite a lot of Genshin content creators advertise this service.
Also they may have to remove Welkin Moons which will really suck. I'm basically ftp with just buying Welkin Moons. I try to keep at least 50,000 to 80,000 primogems at all times not letting it go much below that. I plan to pull for Furina and Venti when he runs.
The currency is obnoxious to transfer but all it takes is a calculator to figure out prices and the crystals to primos are 1:1 value so I don’t get it, however I understand this is essentially for the young kids that play and use someone else’s money without understanding the prices. The one thing I wish was spelled out clearer was the ‘soft pity’ odds, as I’ve had a fluctuated experience and it just feels bad sometimes. The rest of the odds are spelled out although in fine print.
No, that’s not the point. Using a calculator to figure out how much everything actually costs is not the point when you’re obfuscating what it really costs on paper in front of their face. Not everyone does this. Even adults. This is especially true if you’re trying to habitually get them addicted through dark patterns like this method when the direct connection to “this ten pull costs x amount.” is not clear. If you want to see stats for rolling, it’s also still not fully clear even on the details on the wishing page. So we have averages, but not provided by hoyoverse. Where do these stats come from? The community for these kinds of statistical data. Not the company. This is part of the bigger problem of the gacha systems with it predatory style dark patterns aimed towards kids and adults alike.
What I'm more concerned about is that this shows parents can't seem to raise kids. Who gave a kid unrestricted access to their own bank account? A parent. These changes are good and they will make the game better, but at the same time this is the same issue as kids spending thousands on Fortnite skins, dumb parents who think giving a kid stuff will have zero consequences
a got citlali and only ONE BENNETT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA c4 to c5, and if I buy his c6 from the paimon's shop, *I KNOW* he will be the first 4* to come when I pull in his banner again
depends on the age i think children should only be allowed to have credit cards if they are over 16 plus have a stable income plus parental consent but im not really well versed in laws about credit cards for minors in the us
It's dumb when these things happen because it's only 20m and then who is the one getting the 20million? the FTC not the people who got manipulated which makes no sense.
So who pays for the attorneys of the FTC who have to go to court against corporations who have 20 million to spare? Fines and settlements are not to make whole those who were harmed. They are incentives to change behavior. This was not a class action law suit.
1 pull = $2 USD (after the initial top-up bonus, when buying the $100 pack). I make sure to always remember this number when buying crystals. Since just looking at primos or crystals themselves it would be easy for many people to over-estimate how many pulls they have. For the average player, or honestly just the average human, there would certainly be some issues keeping track of all the currency conversions to finally get to the fates. And then the actual probabilities. That would get even worse for a teenager that hasn't even learned basic finance yet and doesn't understand the actual value of a dollar. I'm glad that they are doing this, for the sake of others. I just hope it doesn't lead to pull cost increases where you can no longer get 50.5 pulls for $100.
8:50 I don't really look for wishing videos, but scrolling through Shorts I stumbled over a few C6 wishing shorts that give the impression that every second ten pull gives a 5-star.
@ NO. Absolute L take. It benefits irresponsible parents that don't want to be no where near their child's life and rather get drunk, high or both. Let big daddy government take care of my children, I am too busy buying scratch off tickets and cheating on my spouse.
unnecessary fear mongering that just seems topical given the tiktok stuff going on, they're just starting with the most popular gacha which happens to be Chinese, like most gacha actually, but I really don't think this has anything to do with that, at least there's no way to know right now, and it absolutely is a net positive for players
@T-------- I don't care if the government bans Genshin Impact, my problem is the reason they are giving for doing it. I don't believe for a second the government does anything for its citizens, let alone children. That's pure cap.
It's ironic that they're asking genshin to make it clear what the rates are when every event has instructions and I've given up trying to understand what they mean.
All I heard was some bad faith bologna. I hate that "anime artstyle" is always followed up by "appeals to kids" like thats the only audience thats allowed to enjoy anything anime/cartoon. While VERY vague about what exactly is the problem, the things they do touch on such as Genesis Crystals being a secondary inbetween currency and lack of real disclosure of odds are good things to pressure Hoyo on. Hoyo relies too heavily on FOMO and they need to be put in their place about it. Its a shame to see "think of the children" be the angle they chose to tackle this through instead of making parents be responsible for the actions of their children. My parent NEVER let me buy things online. They may have been overbearing but at least they kept me in check so I wouldnt make those types of mistakes. Real things Hoyo should be forced to do. - Have a pity counter like ZZZ - Add a paid GSSR/Selector Ticket like FGO/Blue Archive - Make 160 primos = 1$ - Make Genesis Crystals be exclusive to buying skins and bundles if they want to keep it around - Make purchasing Intertwined Fates and ONLY Intertwined Fates a direct purchase - Add a SSR to the Permanent banner 1 year after release - Do away with Constellations OR make it so you can purchase them for a set amount (10-20$ ideally for them to earn some money) from either a cash shop OR even better through gameplay like a craftable similar to the Elixirs
Seriously? It's all worthless. At ANY level of regulation. Just let people play what they want and vote with their wallet. What's next? A price cap on how much a movie costs?
Wait how does the adding 5 stars to standard fix anything? Does this solve the gacha aspect by having more options to lose to? But that doesnt mean much right? You're still losing 50/50 and getting someone you don't want, even if they're slightly better quality. And do away with cons? Are you saying constellations are a fomo tactic to make characters not feel like whole characters? I mean some definitely, but can you say that for all characters? I guess it's a tactic to fomo weak minded children or heavy gacha addicts? Though I thought we were going without the "for the children" slogan. And I don't want them to give free constellations tbh. They're all super op on modern genshin. Powercreep impact will be a legitimate thing because they don't change old characters much. Yeah they could change the old character, but we didn't bring up the possibility in the 1st place
@Evitzeoshowerthoughts There's nothing to fix because the value of a character is completely subjective. Even $5 on Genshin is technically a waste. People should just spend what they want for the entertainment they want. It's that simple.
@@ipsumlorem3076 lol. Because of regulation gacha games like Genshin can't be 100% scummy. You underestimated how manipulative gacha games can be and how easy it is to create a gambling addiction, especially when said addiction is created during one's impressionable years, it could last for life. Just because you like the product doesn't mean it isn't shitty
6:18 randomly reminded me of the time the gamegrumps posted sponsored video playing genshin and streamed a wish where the animation clearly showed them getting a four star but they cut away to show them having gotten a five star
Okay i agree to a lot of this but have to think and ask, why now? Also, why specifically call out genshin instead of list gatcha games in general? Also regarding the the 20million.... what people rtpically dont understand is while things like that look good at first glance, they're typically bad for the consumer because its not the company who ultimately has to foot that bill, they pass those down onto the consumer usually through price increases and things of the like, it is a very common tactic to minimize loss while still aaving face. Someone ultimately has to pay it. it's almost never the company in the end.
Just like Tariffs. The consumer foots the bill. Tbf though 20m is a drop in the bucket for the company. Even the lowest performing rerun banners make more than that with just mobile sales.
@Nowaylarry yeah, it is a drop in the bucket to a company like hoyo but it's also lost revenue and we all know they want to mitigate that as much as possible. In the end the one who typically gets screwed in a lot of things involving business and goods is the consumer and it blows
A thing that I could see them being forced to do in regards to the "limitedness" of the characters is to give them a more set rerun timer, a shit ton of other gachas have seasonals that come back a specific time of the year or some other type of character that goes to the base pool with very few limited that even then are expected to rerun "often", but Genshin's banner system (Really the hoyo games banners) is so much predatory in the sense that you really have no idea when a character will be back, making you feel more forced to spend if you want them Biggest examples are Shenhe, Wriothesley and Eula, if you check to see what people online say then you know they're "rare" so if you like them as a character you NEED to get them the very next time they appear or you'll loose out for who knows how long
Yes, they are misrepresenting odds. They don't explain soft pity. You didn't know about it and got the 5 star you didn't want thinking at 75 pity you have a 90% chance of being safe and not get one? That's $150 gone right there. They don't explain the mechanic that alternates weapons and characters instead of each having equal chance on each pull or the consequence of this yielding only a fifth of the expected chance to get an off banner character. They write "rate up" and "increased chance to obtain" on limited 5 star characters that have ZERO chance to appear otherwise, creating the false impression that the character is obtainable at any time and has a nonzero chance outside the "rate up" banner. (a reminder each character takes 1-2 years to rerun once nowadays.) They also didn't tell the truth about capturing radiance and made people think it's a flat 5% chance higher to get the limited character when in reality it's a 0% chance that slowly ramps up to 100% the more you lose 50s so it takes many years and extremely bad luck for the average user to ever see the feature do anything. Sure, the net overall average boost 5% but you don't wanna be in that group of players who benefit from that bonus in the first place. There are probably more but these are the ones I can think of immediately.
This reeks of "old person trying to go after them darn video games but not even understanding the systems in the games they're complaining about". Hoyo has a "Details" page attached to every banner in every single one of their games. And in it they go over exact %'s for drop rates. Can they probably clean it up? Yea totally maybe use a graph to display this information. But to accuse them of purposely obfuscating rates or trying to misrepresent actually drop rates is bizzare.
iirc the only thing Hoyoverse doesn't tell you about drop rates is that soft pity is a thing, which they probably should include somewhere. Like you say, using a graph would probably be a good way of displaying the chance of getting a 5-star. Aside from that, I feel like everything is pretty straightforward. You can figure out how much a single pull is with simple math, so anyone who bothers to put in the bare minimum amount of effort and open a calculator can figure out how much they'd be spending. The real issue is parents giving their kids access to their credit card, or otherwise leaving it unattended and making it easy for their child to steal it.
It is designed to be confusing. They could easily make it 1 dollar = 1 wish, or something. Honkai Impact has no 50/50 and no fate points. So, why did Hoyo introduce new layers of complexity in Genshin? To confuse people. Let's review: you buy a strange amount of crystals (like 3,280 for $50) which you then have to convert into primogems for no reason, then you convert them into two types of fates at 160 each, then you pull on a banner where you get either a 50/50 or a 75/25, but actually the 75 is split into another 50/50, but if you lose you get a fate point, but it's only good on this banner, since it doesn't carry over. Does that seem streamlined to you? How about you pay money for a pull and you're guaranteed to get the thing you want within X pulls. No useless conversions, no 50/50, no fate points, no shenanigans.Just make like a slot machine with easily displayed odds.
@@wallacehoward2792 You're making it out to be a lot more complicated than it is. 50/50s exist in practically every gacha game, that's nothing unique to Genshin or Hoyoverse in general. As for the Genesis crystals, if they wanted to obfuscate things they wouldn't have made it literally a 1:1 value with primogems. The crystals largely exist to tie outfits into the monetization as real money purchases. It's pretty much laid out for you upfront that a 10 pull costs 1600 primogems. It's also extremely obvious that the Genesis crystals are 1:1 with primogems. Basic elementary school math allow you to figure out how many pulls you're getting for your money from there, and the odds are all laid out for you in plain text. The weapon banner is a bit overcomplicated, but it's also not that hard to intuitively understand how it works. You have a 75% chance of a five star being one of the two on the banner, and it's 50/50 which of the two you'll get. If you don't get what you want, you get a fate point, and the next time you pull one of the two weapons on the banner, it'll be the one you want. The game is very upfront about those odds. You can discuss whether or not those are good odds all you want, but the claim is that the system is deceptive, which I just don't see here. As for fate points not moving between banners, that's also not unique to Hoyoverse games, and the way it's presented it's pretty clear that it doesn't transfer over, so it still isn't deceptive.
That 20m is probably chump change to how much money they've made from this game. Still if it effects not getting english VA's back for longer because of money concerns than that really hurts
tbh, genshin already displays the odds to get smt pretty well (even makes them look worse than they are, since they dont talk about softpity ingame). Meanwhile Fifa (or eafc) exists... being able to purchase fates directly would be a nice improvement still
The displayed odds for a rate up 5* are the consolidated odds. It takes the soft pity into the equation. This means that the odds before reaching soft pity are actually lower than the stated %. They aren't lying about the odds but it is misleading with just their banner details page to go by.
@ yeah, i mean just the fact that the only pity they name is 90, while in reality almost noone even pulled to 90 pity due to soft pity and you can assume that 90% of the time you get the 5 star before 80 pulls, which is better than the 90, since they make it sound like you often get to 90 (pretty bad/outdated writing that hasnt been updated ig). Still even having a pity system, a system that guarantees the rateup char aswell and the new system that prevents many lost 50/50 in a row too is kinda luxury if you look at other games like fifa, which is like compelete casino…
F2P players having played for years and still not being able to get the characters they want when they want them or still not being able to clear endgame is pure bliss.
Genshin was my first Gacha. When I first started, I found the system of getting wishes confusing. For $15 you get 980 genesis crystals, except the first time, when you get 1,960. Why not just make it 1000 and 2000? Whatever. Then you convert the genesis crystals into primogems. So, why not just sell primogems? Whatever. Then you convert primogems into Acquaint fates or Intertwined fates at 160 primogems each. Why have two different fates? And why 160 and not 150, or even 100? Why not just sell the fates directed for dollars? Why not 15 dollars=15 fates? Then I realized it was designed to be confusing. It's like how a casino makes you turn your dollars into chips, so they feel less like "real" money. I'm used it now, of course, but it's definitely designed to confuse people into spending more money. Especially kids.
Well a valid credit card (that isn't pre-payed) would at least cut down on the number of kids playing the game. Honestly any game with gambling requiring real money should require one to even make an account.
8:20 "misrepresenting odds" on every banner, there is a "probability increased!" thing written on it, and it actually means "increased from ZERO" because you can't pull the character otherwise? I guess? because i too felt disappointed when the "probability increased" wasn't real when I was a new player
Nah, this is a nothingburguer, if anything it will make it more annoying to do pulls in-game because we'll have to convert the currency like 2 times before being able to pull
not gonna defend hoyo cuz gacha in itself is predatory- we all know. but when people with power get involved with restricting stuff their not doing it for the peoples benefit, but just to restrict cuz they want money & have more of a hold on people. theres a reason their doing this and its not for "the children!!". :/
I think the part about deceptive odds is related to the 50/50 system, making it harder for players to understand the chances of getting the rate-up five-star.
new players will know that $100 doesnt give not even the necessary amount for soft pity. And no, no one should have to do calculations to see how is their money being translated to the game currency
@@joaovictorrodrigueskosugi6375 But it's not changing anything other than give more info how not worth spending on anything other than walking is. If you ask me, even the battle pass is not worth the money.
I really love your content. You’re honest and you admit that you know Genshin is predatory in some way, and you’re glad that it is changing. Every time I watch your videos I am astounded by the level of care you give and the way you word yourself to give the people their best chance at getting a character. Your videos give people the objective opportunity to see how character banners line up with each other and their worth, which I think is really great. I think they need to be clearer with how the banners actually work when the banner system is unlocked. And they need to make sure that people are reading it. Either a timer or making the tutorial/informational screen full size would help with this I think
I find it kind of telling that they go after Mihoyo first before even touching Fortnite. You wanna talk about targeting children and dark patterns? Epic somehow gets away with it and for the life of me I don't understand why.
why. why is it telling? god. stop defending the multi billion dollar company built on exploitation of vulnerable people. they have to start somewhere. genshin is one of the best places to start, and they're actually mega late to the party, they should have done this in version 1.2
Who wanna bet some kid spent 10k+ on genisis crystals then turned them to standard pulls
🤣🤣probably
And will get Qiqi and Dehya
Ouch......but actually Qiqi and Dehya are quite viable nowadays with Furina's existence
@ Anything is goint to work with Furina somehow. It's not achievement of those two suckers
Parents were okay with it until they saw the c6 Qiqi.
I feel like ZZZ showing the pity on the banners themselves is a step in the right direction. They should apply that to all the games, TBH
They had that in HI3 for years. It an old thing that for whatever reason Hoyo decided not to implement in HSR or GI.
yes, it's very annoying to count the pulls and then remember if you have a guarantee. It definitely should be more transparent.
I keep my own note file so I have my exact history but the display on the banner is great quality of life
I do enjoy it in GFL2. Yeah, different company, but still.
@@TheValkyrieRising None of this matters because any $ spent is technically a waste bc the result has no value other than as entertainment. This whole line of argumentation is stupid.
they should give us another free 10 pulls on top of the 20
Any chance they will?
@@bestisbest6581😂😮
Lol, not gonna happen
@Nothemanni could happen
A lot of times, companies will settle this by offering either really money compensation for damages or some free in-game currency
It happened the same way with fortnite after the ftc went after them for the loot boxes in save the world part of their game.
I received a ton of vbucks after that settlement
@@Nothemanni hoyo would much rather pay the 20 million settlement in primos rather than paying money
Untrue about the surveys. If you put in a birthday that shows you're underage the survey ends and it gives you the mora reward. Someone underage has to lie about their age at the beginning of the survey to actually fill out the survey.
You can do this the entire time? Why didn't i know about this?
It won't let me go under 18
@@Re_V I discovered it long ago after my niece tried to do the survey and it completed it, so if not the beginning then somewhere near the beginning.
@ i would've saved 2 hours worth of my lifetime had I known 😭
You know that's great, but aren't the surveys there to communicate with the developers on how much you like the in game features / events / gameplay?
Love it when the FTC does their dang job. Hate that this has to be wrapped up in "Think Of The Children" nonsense, but that's the dumb world we live in. Nothing can be done for the sake of the average consumer.
Love American law
Because it is expected of the average consumer to have average intelligence. Gambling mechanics are designed to target vulnerable individuals. Most of those are children, teens, and young adults.
@@DotDusk Funny how American law expects average intelligence from an average adult when the country is well known for being filled with idiots.
This is not only "think of the children", it is think of the consumer. It just so happens that children were caught in the crossfire, as they often are. I love this game but I can see why this game is appealing to children and dangerous to those children and their parents. Marketing often pit children against their parents, strictly for profit. Any game that can be seen as harmless by children has the potential to not be acknowledged of real dangers that exist in those games. Gambling is dangerous for adults, so it is even more dangerous for children that do not understand it.
They do their job only on foreign companies, EA Fifa? CSGO? All fine, the americano classico
while I agree with applying restrictions … I as a parent I will never understand how other parents allow this. My girl plays roblox and ain’t no way in hell she’s using any cc. all she gets is a card from walmart once in a blue moon.
kids will find other ways for example asking for cash and getting and apple gist card and buying ir like that
This is the real solution... You should NOT have a CC linked to your child's account, and if you know you lack self-control, don't link it to yours either... Its ok to allow them to play, even spend a little money, but it should be rare and they should have to earn it...
@@captainburger8610 If you just passing out hundreds of dollars to your child, and they spending it on gacha... kinda your fault
Most parents are like you. The fringe cases where kids spends copious amounts of their parents money on a game are straight up statistical anomalies. The internet however has this odd way of making it seem like it's a more frequent occurrence than it actually is.
That said, like someome above me mentioned, kids can be sneaky about it, but it still falls on the parents as well to monitor what their kids are asking them for money for and to show their parents what they spent it on as well. No responsible parent should just be giving their kids 20 bucks randomly for something their kid claims they want it for without also wanting their child to show them what they spent the money on.
Little did you know, buy cards in a blue moon is already too much lol
So from my understanding, the lootbox seems to refer to the character banner and I believe that they view the fates as Keys to pull on the banners(lootboxes). But hey, we don't know the full picture until this is fully followed through.
No yeah, that’s pretty much it
Loot box is a general term for gacha games; banners in genshin, elder rift dungeon in diablo immortal etc
Thanks yall, mainly wanted to comment this because of how it seemed to have reference loot boxes being the fates and not the banner itself in the video
The term "loot box" can not be applied to Genshin, it's a completely different thing from different games. (And I'm glad Genshin doesn't have any)
Wishing system has always been rather transparent, and the vast majority of people only spend on Moon or BP. And there's nothing unfair or deceiving - what you see is what you get
@@alexandrachernysh7 if 50/50 didn't exist, you may be right. But they do, so yeah, it is deceiving.
Misrepresentation = "Come check out the new *boosted rates* for (character)". "Boosted rates" implies that the character is available at all times. In the promo texts that get sent out via email and hoyolab notifications it uses this language and do not acknowledge in the notifications that the characters are limited in time/availability.
agreeee with this, so many games do it so i've gotten used to it but first time gacha players get tripped up on this so much.
No. They could just argue by saying "its boosted from 0%"
@@raihanrusli2720 It's still a dumb way to word it. Saying something like "(character) now available for a limited time!" Or "Don't miss the rerun of (character)" would make more sense.
It is the half truth marketing. The 4 stars do have a boosted rate and are available at all times, just not the 5 stars lol
@@azl218xc its dumb, but I guess that is how it works in the court lol. Tbh i dont even know whether I was kidding or not
When in doubt, hit 'em with the ol' "Think of the children"
While I think most of this complaint is valid... I'm not sure how they DECEIVED anyone about the rates. The rates are written in the banner details and are accurate.
But, as you said, almost any restriction on gacha systems is probably a good thing.
50 50 system me thinks. yes, the probability of you getting a 5 star is there, but it can be deceiving since the 5 star you'll get is not the one on the banner
We don't know that they're accurate.
@@Matthew-ij3zm Except .... there are communities that have collected data and calculated rates on Gacha's with a high degree of accuracy BEFORE they were required to disclose the rates. Those same people can EASILY check if the rates of any game are fake so why would a company waste their own time dealing with the potential consequences of lying about it. They're greedy not stupid.
Hmm I agree with age restriction. But deceiving rate? Is there lot of case of children spending so much for this game?
@@Matthew-ij3zm we do - they have calculated the ACTUAL odds from player records and the stated odds are very close.
they even calculated how the Capturing Radiance works and it's not exactly a 55/45 simple weighting (although the "consolidated odds" DOES come close to that number)
3:30 for real. when i got into genshin it took watching tons of videos and having it explained over and over all the mechanics of wishing in genshin (and gacha in general) especially when people threw around “win/lose 50/50” and i had no idea what that meant. i now have a great understanding of the wishing system but i definitely wasted a lot of wishes when i didnt.
Same here
Exactly this, I was the same. It’s incredible how it’s such a crucial part of the system but you need RUclips videos to understand how it works.
Really? It only took a 10 minute explanation from my friend for me to understand.
Genshin's standard banner is one of the worst I have ever seen! Only Star Rail and other games copying hoyo are this bad.
In other gachas I played you had some chance pulling limited characters from standard.
I wasted 10-20 pulls before finding out Genshin's system.
@@ChefMonke07stop bragging 😂
Consider: most people learn about the pity system from outside the game.
Consider: even if you "win" you've obtained a worthless digital game character. That's what makes this whole thing such a farce. 😂
@@ipsumlorem3076 If you've ever rented a movie digitally or paid money to listen to music digitally you've done the exact same thing. It's spending money on entertainment. You just don't value this particular form of entertainment. And to be fair, the 100+ dollars for one tiny piece of a video game is a ridiculous cost and a bad value proposition in my opinion, too. But the idea of buying a thing that is a digital good you use for entertainment being completely worthless isn't accurate. People do it all the time, just generally in smaller amounts.
dark patterns (fomo, misrepresentation, 50/50, multiple currencies) are weaved specifically to intercept and convolute human thought at a complex level (psychology, business, statistics); but when a company "simplifies" these patterns to a middle school algebra level of understanding (slot machine press button) it becomes more accessible and accepted (ie not predatory enough). The essence of gacha created a complex series where each step of trying to gamble is convoluted yet simple enough were people willingly give into the system rather than understand it (thinking is hard, boobas make me feel good) and its effects. History repeats and governments rein in predatory practice until they benefit from profits.
I love his clorinde search bar in the background
Even though Genshin is currently my favorite game, this should have happened far sooner. If EA got raked over the coals for loot boxes, then so should Hoyo.
While I agree it should’ve happened sooner, EA is still by far the worst offender & they’re still doing so.
@paulolugo7447 I don't think ea is worse than hoyo when it comes to lootboxes since hoyos entire business model is based off getting people addicted to gambling and worse off children as well.
@@FLG_NEO_ you are saying children dont play EA games? morons
Good world healing
Remember when EA released a FIFA pack themed around a football player, and that player wasn't even available in that pack? Classic EA. 😂
mixed on this... The FTC statement was vaguer than a gacha banner lol.
Never once felt like I was being 'deceived' by hoyo but than I'm an adult who does the math before spending money and I was raised by parents who would NEVER have allowed me access to their credit card. On the other hand, getting rid of intermediary virtual currency would be great! Beyond that, I'm gonna wait and see if sets some kind of precedence or if anything will even change beyond the fine print getting a little bigger. Plus, I'm not in the US so will I even get to see that much?!
lol true. Their statements are like that of politicians to confuse the average citizen. The irony.
Still, I wish Hoyo had to pay more than 20 mil. Thats nothing to them.
it wasn't vague - they just didn't understand it and had some intern draw up the language.
it's all just to grab a cut of the money that Hoyo are making.
what is MORE worrying is that Hoyo can then turn it into "fixed pricing" and that will really kill f2p players.
@@digadeh They're probably happy to get anything, Hoyo gets a PR win for 20 mil and the US Government gets a pr win with the idiots who were deceived despite there being no deception. Hoyo could've fought and won because they have never deceived anyone, the odds are all there in black and white on every single banner and the cost is calculable with 3rd grade math. They also have never once used "dark-pattern" practices in their games. A lot of fly by night companies do that (and blizzard), but Hoyo never has and I played HI3 for a year before Genshin came out and have played every game since, since release.
@@binsarm9026 this is correct^^
@binsarm9026 how?
Someone lost out on a 50/50 and called the Feds, lmaoo 😂
quite possible😎
i would too i lost in all natlan banners
All this amounts to is Hoyo being more clear on not only what you get, but how likely it is to get it. A net benefit for all parties frankly. Not to mention the free 10 pull we'll be getting as "Apologies".
Not so fast. They cannot sell crystals to children under 16 without parental consent. That is major. Does that mean age verification for the bargain shop?
If what they want is hoyo to show real monetary value of things, then the same applies to rewards and they can justify everything by saying, we gift like millions to players, since it is actual currency we handle.The ppl behind the fine are so stupid that they are implicity allowing market share and micro transactions outside the games, the very same problem that cod has and that has destroyed families over the years.
To be honest I'm decent at math and once I actually understood the system, I know exactly how to budget for characters and it's not really gambling to me, because there is an eventual guarantee. I think of true gambling as possibly spending endlessly without ever, ever being guaranteed what you're gambling for. But tbh I'm adjusted to the predatory gacha system and I think I've been brainwashed a bit to think it's more normal/reasonable than it is. I kind of forgot until this video how confusing the crystals -> primos -> fates system can actually be. If I wasn't an ultra responsible spender I could have gotten in trouble with it myself. So I applaud jello for saying it like it is when it comes to this issue. I think gachas have probably gotten away with way too much on the "but it's in the fine print" excuse.
Aside from those that show up in the shop rotation (or lantern rite) there is never a guarantee for a specific 4* character. You could in theory (though astronomically unlikely) wish thousands of times for say Heizou for example and not see a single copy of him even when on rate up. So I'd say it is still gambling.
A personal example, way back in 1.4 I ended up with c2 Childe before seeing a single copy of Rosaria (her first rate up banner). Granted the odds of that are technically lower than pulling two 5*s in a single ten pull.
In a similar boat, I'm very into math, and one of the first things I did when I realized I actually liked Genshin enough to spend a little was calculate out that Welkins - by far - was the best deal of the bunch in-game. Still have never bought and probably never will buy genesis crystals directly. Just... doesn't seem worth it to me - even with the bonuses. After a while, I just got used to saving up primos to try my best to guarantee my most wanted 5* - while assuming the worst luck. (Just lost 50/50 today on Citlali's banner to C1 Mona - which... not terrible, but not ideal either). I think I'll save the guarantee for the rerun banner coming up. (Also set up a personal goal to myself to collect the Fontaine cast since I REALLY like them, and the Archons).
So it's gambling until you've literally gambled so much that it isn't. "Gacha!"
If you just assume a character costs the worst case scenario and anything less than that is a surprise sale price, like a responsible human being, it isn't hard. I kinda hate this big brother - legislating responsibility crap. It shouldn't be a businesses responsibility to explain currency to people. I don't want a 5 minute lecture on dollars and cents and the relative value of goods every time I walk into Walmart and this is the reductio-ad-absurdum of this entire legislation. It's kinda pathetic that education has fallen so far that a lot of people are onboard with this nonsense.
@ Yes, exactly. I always budget around 160 pulls for a character and if I get them in less it's a nice discount.
But I politely disagree with the "legislating responsibility crap" statement, if you're implying that no one should go after gachas for their purposefully confusing and predatory practices. Yes, responsibility ultimately falls on the individual, but why in the world should there be zero responsibility for the multibillion dollar companies? Lol. I'm gonna agree with jello on this one.
Maybe I’m dense, but I feel like the only major changes that fixes a lot of this is you change genesis crystal packs to primos, and then the pack tells you how many wishes it’s worth.
Then on the wish screen, there’s always blatant prompt on the banner that would automatically pop up for new players that explains the wish system in clear terms. I’m decent at math but even I can admit there’s no to overload a player with text and percentages. A simple tldr with an example would do.
Also while I totally agree that children and young teens should have more protection against gacha system, isn’t more of a problem that consoles and PC’s so easily save the info and purchase without some kind of mandatory password set up? Even if a parent is crazy enough to allow a child to play something that has their credit card purchases, maybe…those purchases should require a password every time something is bought? If the kid knows the password, that’s the parent’s fault. At some level you have to watch your kids.
Then Genesis crystals need to dissappear for this to work since you can also buy packs and costumes with Genesis crystals
completely agree with you, this is kind of a nothingburger
@@SmartyPantsDash Yeah and that’s an easy change, because their conversation rate is the exact same as primos!
@@SmartyPantsDash They could just sell packs and costumes for real $. Like $20 for a skin on sale or $30 for a full price one. If they want to bundle it with welkin then you can buy 3 months of welkin + skin of choice for $45 or whatever. It'd cost the same amount it does now, you'd just have to actually look at the $ amount.
@@SmartyPantsDashI don't think it needs to.
The Conversation rate between primos and gensis is exactly 1 to 1 so they can just show the amount of pulls you are getting just on the top up screen.
They way they're equating the character banner to a loot box, wouldn't "Prohibited from allowing children under 16 to purchase lootboxes in their video games without parental consent" potentially mean kids under 16 wouldn't be allowed to wish at all without parental consent? Or would "purchase" imply they're not allowed to use real life money only, but primos/fates would still be OK? The wording is so silly, surely someone in the FTC has played or at least has a family member who's played a gacha game before, but I guess not.
Also as a someone who has kids that play Genshin, I don't understand anyone who would just let their kids have access to a credit card like that. I've told my kids how much 10-pull would cost in real money and they agree it's not worth it.
You do you but even 'simulated gambling' instills gambling as a habit. As for what will change with the game, it seems most likely that they will just remove genesis crystals from the shop and allow purchase of primo gems directly (and only on the NA server).
@@Nowaylarry You're forgetting costumes. Removing Genesis crystals would require them to change the mechanism they use to make those into real money purchases.
@@danielhounshell2526it isn't a hard change at all, they could do it overnight if they wanted to and I guess they're forced to now. Good
For misrepresenting the rates they could be talking about soft pity I have never seen soft pity odds shown anywhere
That was my thought as well
But isn't soft pity advantageous to the player? You can't sue for odds being BETTER than advertised.
@@effortlessfury Yeah you can. Soft pity is not advertised so we don5know the actual odds. So if you think soft pity starts at 65 pulls, I believe it starts at 75 and they actually start at 85, the lack of actual clear confirmation will change how we make decisions.
I'm at 55 pulls and believe I need 20 more to get to soft pity so I buy 20 pulls but surprise I need 10 more to actually get those odds so I lose my money and can't even complain. Worse if you think the pity is at 65.
On top of that there's the new capture radiance system that supposedly makes the drop rate a (consolidated) 55/45 and you think that's just better chances when it's actually a hell of a lot more complicated than that but was never explained and instead people online had to figure it out.
You're not suing for the odds being better or worse, you're suing for the fact that they're unclear or downright deceptive.
@ No I really don't think you can sue for them giving you better odds. They don't tell you about soft pity, so you would assume it doesn't exist. Under that assumption, you will always have odds that are as good as stated or better.
I think the "deceptive" aspect here is that people are taking the consolidated probability as the actual per-roll probability. They need to make it clearer what consolidated probability is, so that people don't believe their per-roll chance is 1.6%.
@ My way of seeing it is that people who are not online and don't know about the soft pity system will constantly think they "got lucky" or that it was early this could lead to them making purchasing decisions based on that 90 guaranteed
A simple example would be a player is at 55 pulls and the banner is going away in 3 days the player then purchases the 100 dollar top up instead of the 50 dollar top up believing that the 24 pulls received will not be enough
I believe the existence of soft pity and it's rates would be something that the government should force
In general, it's about $2 per pull. Less if you only do welkin, more if you buy smaller packs, but the biggest pack comes out very close to $2/pull.
i think all of this is user error. it’s a simple conversion if you think about it for 10 seconds
. So how much money in USD is 1423 primo gems I don't know any 12 to 16 yo that can math that in 10 seconds.
You don't even buy promos you buy a separate currency(Genesis crystals) that you convert to promos. That you then spend on a fate that is technically a loot box.
2$ for one pull. If you're extremely unlucky and hit 90 pity somehow that's 180$. 2$ for a pull that has a 9/10 chance of being a random 3 star weapon is crazy.
Is there a conversion for $amount per pull for welkin + bp
@SheetsInc even worse when you have to convert to other currencies
It's refreshing to see you mention that you're complicit to some degree in these issues. Lots of content creators/influencers act like they're innocent bystanders, but in reality by making content they're promoting the game and subsequently their monetization practices. Genshin would have seen it's staggering success back in 2020 (and all that followed) if it wasn't for content creators.
is everyone who pays taxes complicit in murican imperialism?
@@rickmel-q7m This is not the gotcha you think it is, it is very obviously a false equivalence. Video Game content creators have way more control over the content they cover vs whether an American citizen/resident pays taxes. But even though you clearly asked this question in bad faith, I'll do my best to give my opinion on it...
Americans, generally speaking, have a history of electing warmongers. There are lots of Americans that disagree with their government's imperialist M.O. but, functionally speaking, they stopped really protesting war in the late 2000s. With that context, looking at the present, in my opinion, Americans have been very passive at responding to their elected President's threat's to annex three territories. There is so much they could be doing like protesting and putting pressure on their local governments to push back. Complicit is a strong term in this case, but I think American citizens are, to some degree, culpable for how their country interacts with foreign entities.
Anyways, hope you're enjoying Natlan I guess.
@ I just realized this answer might have been a little too much for someone like you so let me summarize it using terms that are within your grasp...
Yeah, they are.
@ it's a false equivalence in the sense that imperialism does harm to people who didn't sign up for it :)
Glad to hear you agree!
i think some of the comments are missing the forest for the trees wrt the cost of pulls being 'unclear'. obviously you can calculate it if you take the time to, but obfuscating a purchase in layers so that you end up spending imaginary tokens instead of the currency you recognize is a just a straight up psychological tactic. most games with microtransactions do it of course but i think it's particularly noticeable in gacha
Gonna shut down dave and busters and chuck e cheeses now with that logic?
Yep. The more steps there are between the real currency ($) and the product you receive, the less the brain is aware of the actual cost. In Genshin it's real currency -> Genesis crystals -> Primogems -> wishes -> chance for a result. If you're somewhat in control of your impulses, you'll check your pity, calculate how many wishes you'd need approximately to guarantee what you want and then check the price of the package that you need to buy to get there. But if you're more impulsive/addicted and/or you miscalculated/got unlucky and decide to top up again, it can be very easy to lose track of how much you spent, especially with all the conversion rates inbetween. If they shortened the chain to real currency -> wishes -> chance for a result, that would take away 2 conversion steps and more directly link the real currency to the product you received.
These types of practices don't prey on people who are in control and spend wisely. They prey on people who are looking for the dopamine hit/instant gratification, or people who don't have a grasp on the value of money yet (kids). Or in the case of MMO's, people who are susceptible to peer pressure. The people who are not in the most rational state of mind.
@@logikx1325 is stupidity already part of the DNA of your people?
I think the biggest issue is, the company should not "require" any player to grab a calculator or an excel sheet to caculate his odds and risks. Just telling "in worst case, you'd have to spend $ to obtain your desired character" would help a lot of ppl for what they are about to go for.
@@logikx1325No reason to use “that logic” near where I work: the Internet Café, bar+arcade, escape room, and at least 10 restaurants all went out of business already. They were hit hard by work from home and many not coming back even now.
All in all, it's good for the addicts. However, it should be accompanied by a) teaching Americans reading comprehension and mathematics (tbh, it's not that hard to understand how much a character would cost in the worst-case scenario), b) parents actually parenting and not letting their kids play random games and spend money without supervision.
Totally this.
But if you want to go a bit more in depth in studying the cost as a random variable you need to have studied a university level probability course. The reality is that the system is obscure. For example soft pity mechanics are declared nowhere on the banner information, and to find probability and cumulative distribution functions you need to use online resources that themselves declare are working on assumptions.
This. Confusing exchange rates ???? Because 1:1 and then 160:1 is SO confusing right. As for the confusing on cost - there is a simple solution that I know Hoyo will simply not impalement - making the purchase amounts correspond to exact numbers of pulls.
@@RoninBlackwing the funny part about this situations rn... ALL GACHA game use this system, there no gacha game that sell a 1 to 1 currency to match the pulls... Genshin getting sued cuz they making alot money out of Americans and how populor the game are. other game been using this system for years but never been an issue as ingakit5381 said just read.
@@davidebic I've just check and actually the soft pity is there under the name of consolidated probability. and the hard pity is already in the description too.
There are also pressure from the Chinese government to remove bonus incentives for first time purchase. The thing about that first time purchase incentive is that it obfuscate the real cost of those many pulls for the first time. If you're unlucky, then the sunk cost mentality kicks in and you now HAD to purchase the more expensive variety to actually get the character/weapon, something that some would not do if the first time purchase was that expensive.
I hope they don't remove the double bonus from purchases, leaving the number of purchased primogems the same as now
@@hungry_rabbit9032 Except it's not a double bonus because you still get a percentage on subsequent purchases, too. There is not a time where you ever get 6400 gems for the big bundle.
@@hungry_rabbit9032 What you might not realize is that they might be forced to lower the price of primogems so that it is the same value as the first time purchase or less people will be inclined to buy into it at all. And without that, there is no sunk cost mentality to buy more at higher price.
they should be sued for the double bonus to become the regular amount always given
It's also just another layer of obsfucation. It's not 330, it's 300 + 30 (or whatever the bonus is).
I hope this only improves the game. But after what happened to TikTok, I can only see this as pretext to ban it or something.
the FTC has nothing to do with the tiktok ban tho
@lukee7442 not directly, but it's law/government related. And people have been pointing out the "they're only doing this because it's a chinese company". But yes, I know, at the very least the arguments make more sense than "chinese spy" or whatever.
Ahh don’t you love our American government banning anything it can’t have power over
Regardless tho I doubt they’d ban Genshin just for the fact that it’s so under the dinosaurs in offices radar that they probably don’t even know about it
Ding ding, loot boxes are good only if it's done by western company.
If TikTok’s ban was because of safety they would’ve banned it long ago when Trump wanted. But they’re banning it now for political reasons that I can’t talk about because RUclips will remove my comment…lol. So they probably won’t ban gacha games for “safety”
Has anyone else noticed that he keeps saying "acquaint fate" being the standard one instead of "intertwined fates"
I honestly don't know the names, I get the pinkish one.
Well, yet another proof for how there's way too many currencies in the game. A single type of fate could also have been enough, but we all know that the segregation into event and standard banners works into Hoyos favour.
I mean, he's just reading the article. I assume the ftc meant the intertwined fates, or just both in general.
He's about as familiar with the game as the FTC. Has anyone in the history of ever referred to pulling on a banner as "opening lootboxes"?
@@Linealothe issue is the fact that there are plenty of other gachas that have multiple different types of currencies in game, I’d think it’s only fair that every other gacha gets the same restriction at this point.
It is overall a good thing but when you have companies like EA and Valve who make way more money than hoyo, it’s kinda obvious why the FTC is targeting hoyo in particular.
Yep, definitely has nothing to do with the stuff surrounding tiktok and all the other bipartisan anti-china bullshit coming out of congress. We are coming off 4 years of a historically unpopular president who knowingly funded a genocide and the idiot boomers running shit think they can distract people with "china bad" bullshit.
So Genshin earns much more than valve and EA from cases
Except Hoyo beats all of them before Tencent
@@arocomisgamusclademork1603love how yall are avoiding what op mentioned by arguing other shit. EA, Valve, Activision/Blizzard, OTHER AMERICAN COMPANIES DO THIS SHIT TOO. SIMILAR TO THEM HOING AFTER TIK TOK OVER EVERY OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA OWNED BY AMERICANS. Don't be obtuse about it
it's only "more money", not "way more". Go search the revenues of those companies in 2024
I agree it should be clear that the 100$ gets you not even 50 pulls.
Gacha is a business model that allows the game to be free but preys on noobs to spend absurd amounts of money to win the lottery
That is a highly volatile spending practice that is not suited for everyone.
Most don't realize that, if you choose to spend any money on this game, essentially for the price of a Netflix monthly sub (welkin + pass) you get everything you need
Money buys time. That's basically it. The currency is actually time, not money per se.
@@ipsumlorem3076last I checked the $100 USD package gives me 50 pulls?
umm the 100$ one gets you 50.5 pulls (8080 genesis crystals) and considering stardust and first top-up, technically more.
@@mj6582 this is it & what should be made transparent for new players: there’s cheaper ways to get everything you need if you’re patient & don’t mind grinding.
Through spending on welkin & the battle pass alone + doing all the free primogems events I can, I’ve been able to get literally every single 5* from 5.1 to 5.3, that’s around $30 USD for 6 characters. & tbh I could’ve easily skipped Lyney but I was new.
People just need to learn how to spend wisely & understand that you don’t need every single character, but the game should also make it transparent.
i think a lot of people dont realize how many young people, those too young to be in control of their own spending and money, too young to fully grasp concepts as winning a 50/50, rateup, or basic gambling, play genshin as well as. the things presented in the article are valid concerns and criticism. players outside of content creators and adults exist too.
Kids shouldn't be playing Genshin. I think 16 is too young, should be 18.
The 50/50 thing has been the most scummiest system with Genshin Impact. If it were removed, the game would be far better for it.
@@NonMeta_ Yeah if I had kids, I wouldn't be letting them play any gatcha game (or I try my best to not expose them to it). And if they did want to play a game like Genshin, I would ask them if they'd rather spend money on a video game that they'll eventually stop playing or something they rather have that's more permanent. It's all about diversion.
@@MultiMVirus literally the reason all my friends enjoyed playing genshin when it released but stop playing not even a week after. I started playing in 5.0 and almost dropped the game when i lost my first 5* to 50/50
it drives alway to many people who would actually spent time in game and even buy regular welkin or bp's, but don't see a point in doing so when the regard you get for the time/money invested is a Qiqi
8:03 I think they should just sell skins for a cash value and totally get rid of Genesis Crystals. They should be required to directly sell Intertwined Fates.
That would make skins a lot more expensive. Do you have any idea how many of us out there who abuse the yearly double Genesis Crustal and the Welkin Moon to get skins in the cheapest possible way?
Crystals is 1 to 1 to primogems
@@bootao1671 okay but primogems aren't 1 to 1 with pulls which is the issue the FTC has, makes it seem more valuable by having a higher number than what it's providing.
@@ChefMonke07 You know the simple solution just make it give double primogems once every year -_-
@@MultiMVirusthis right here, people are so addicted to gambling that they’re trying to justify being played when there are solutions as simple as this
The problem I see is that this would just make the game mlre expensive, meaning without Genesis Crystals (itls that their name?) you couldn't buy yourself a cool skin passively through some Welking Moon
8:16 they ARE misrepresenting the lootbox odds. Early on when the game was new someone in China did calculation and found that the odds didnt match what was stated and then they did more calculations with more data and they discovered that after a certain point it became more likely to get a 5 star (what we now call soft pity) and that the reason it says consolidated rate instead of just directly saying x% is becasue it is less likely before soft pity and much more likely after soft pity and the actual number is not given just the consolidated number.
This is how soft pity was discovered and it is abosolutely misleading and very evident to regular players after so many years that this is how it works across all their games. To be clear I think the FTC lucked into this one but if soft pity was ever brought up in court as misleading Hoyo are very likely to lose imo. There is a chance this ruling could forcce them to get rid of the condolidated percentage language when stating the rates which could mean early 5 stars go up and soft pity disappears.
I hope this gets more ddiscussion since I dont think many know about it.
Exactly, it's not evenly distributed. You're vastly more likely to pull 5*s at 74-80 than anything else.
A lot of what the FTC alleges, and the terminology they're using, implies *heavily* that they did not do much research on the game before slapping an allegation and a fine on it.
It's to pad some career bureaucrat's resume. That's 100% what this is about. Someone got a promotion though!
There is a difference between gacha and lootboxes, and anyone referring to one as the other clearly didn't put in the work or doesn't care.
I think it's just used for the documents
@@azuarcCan you explain what the difference is? The only notable difference I know of is that gachas usually give you some sort of guarantee while lootboxes don't.
@@silentpeppers47 nonsense - if it's for the documents, all the more reason to understand the situation ACCURATELY. how can you make a regulation when you cannot differentiate between loot box and the hero ?
There are two practices I would like to see removed not only from Hoyo games, but all live service games. The first is the convert currency to another currency to another currency to buy what you want. The other is where if you want to buy an item in the shop, the currency bundles are always either a little more or a little less than what you need, so you always wind up buying more than you need to get the item.
A "loot box" in Genshin = a single pull. On average it costs about US$175.00 to guarantee acquiring a single 5 star of your choosing; this figure factors in losing one 50/50 in the process so could be far less if you're really lucky. So, a C6 5-star character costs on average US$1,225.00 and does not include their signature weapon. Double that figure if you want an R5 copy of that weapon for a grand total of around US$2,500.00 or thereabouts. For the sake of comparison, a really decent gaming laptop to play that character on would normally cost (far) less than that. Yeah, so Genshin is ridiculously expensive. Then again, one night in Vegas could cost about the same as a C6 5-star... but then you'll also be getting champagne and caviar... or it's also possible for it all to be "free" if you're really lucky at the slot machine which ofc doesn't happen with Genshin.
I paid under $600 for my laptop that runs Genshin beautifully so yeah, you have a point 🫠
And then the character get power creep in few months and can't clear the new event for whale specifically tailored for new character
Mentioning things like C6 and R5 is absolutely pointless because those are only for the absolute whales out there. No character in the game requires anything more than C0 to function. You don't even need their weapons. The game isn't expensive, people just don't know how to save.
@@infiniteaj8688Well, yes, such characters as Risley, Hu Tao and Dehya do not exist, whose advantages that should be in the c0 version are behind the first constellation
@@hungry_rabbit9032Hu Tao functions without her C1, especially that her Best teams now are plunge where C1 is useless
I bet some viewers click on this thinking that the government will force Hoyo to remove 50/50, reduce pull costs, give more handouts, 5-stars every 10 pulls, and so on.
It's so stupid. It's like pretending the 5 stars have any value at all and we need the government to come in and set the true value of a 5 star. They are all WORTHLESS. This is entertainment only!
The top comment is "they should give us another free 10 pulls on top of the 20"
I'm gonna be honest i'm someone who doesn't read instructions or tutorials much. Genshin was also my first gacha game so i had no idea how it worked or how wishes worked at the start. I did see the offers but i initially thought that every 1 blue cristal thingy (idk whats it's called) was worth 160 primos aka 1 wish. So for the longest time i thought that buying the 110 euro package was for getting like 8000 pulls or so.
Thank god i was f2p for the first year of playing cuz i would've feel scammed
Even at a cursory glance you can tell that genesis crystals converted 1-1 with primogems, nothing suggests that genesis crystals would be worth more
What you’re talking about is not the same as what this case is about. If you thought a single genesis crystal converted somehow equaled a pull even tho it converts to the exact amount in primos for a pull then that would’ve been on you.
@@Janedoe-z2fi think u missunderstood my comment. Back then i didn't earn enough to even think abt spending money on a game but i did look at the offers cuz i was currious. I never looked at the conversion rates ar anything i just assumed it was like 1 - 160 cuz i just couldn't imagine spending 2 euro in a game for 1 pull that just didn't make sense.
Like i said genshin was my first gacha so i wasn't used to those type of horrible rates
@@Janedoe-z2f Deceptive Marketing is in the tittle of the video, and the one who made the coment said that *IF* he spent any money on genshin when he start playing, he would have felt scammed, because hoyo explains things like shit, so fu** you it is the same case
Playing other gachas with no 50/50 system + no repeats rate up banner items in pulls made me realize how brutal it actually was.
About 3:15 , "HoYoverse deceived players about the odds of winning particular sought-after 'five-star' loot box prizes and how much it would cost to open loot boxes to win the prizes". I'm quite sure in this context, a "loot box" is a pull and a "particular sought-after 'five-star' loot box prize" is a limited 5 star character or weapon.
If you think about it, the amount of money I've spent last year on Genshin...I don't even wanna see the total
But I do only spend money if I enjoy the game and feel justified so reward them for doing a good job keeping me entertained 🤷♂️ my personal take
I feel the same way! I finally made a spreadsheet and the amount was more than I thought but not that bad/out of my affordability.
The F2P argument sometimes (while I get it too) makes me feel like the equivalent of getting a Zelda game every 6+ weeks and not paying the $60 for a new game.
Same here! I actually want to spent money on the game - but only as a sign of my gratitude of making good content or characters. But whenever I keep failing the 36* in Spiral Abyss (actually every time) despite being AR60 with many C6 Supports, it feels like they wanna run the P2W poilitcs on me, which is exactly why I stopped spending on this game anymore.
There are a *lot* of gacha/mobile games they have grounds to go after if what Hoyo was doing could be considered "deceptive".
I do think they should completely clear about what the current chances of getting a 5* are accounting for the various pity mechanics, though.
That and visible pity counters on the banner
So, parents arent monitoring their kids and want their money back, is all I've heard.
Ive been playing since 1.2. Ive been keeping track of my spending. Ive spent a total of $200 on this game through welkin moons and ive been able to get every 5☆ character I wanted.
Sure every business has shady predatory practices. But at what point does the customer take personal responsibility?
well this type of companies are making incentives to spend money.basically they are TEMPTING instead of just GIVING access. So most of the bad faith would be on the company
And how many 5 stars do you have exactly?
this. All i ever here is wahhhh wahhh predatory this preadtory that. Bc fuck reposnibility and accountability. A child is not supposed to have access to credit cards???? And lets not pretend this is gonna make children and teens stop spending on Genshin. If they had access to their parents money, they will be using their parents accounts to make said purchases. So the parental controls wont block anything???
They just wanted to sue Genshin. Where is the Wuwa Lawsuit? they copied their monteray system 1:1 so??
This change does little to nothing for the majority of players. Unless they start givng way more rewards, idc about this.
@@danielashekun7001 That's every free to play model in existence. That's not unique to Hoyoverse, or even Gacha games in general.
@@iikendoll 9
Not sure how you equate loot box with acquainted fates. The loot box is the banner. A loot box has to be something that gives you random things with varying rarities. Think of it like opening a treasure chest or defeating a boss in an MMORPG. A loot box is like a treasure chest filled with random items, some good some bad. An acquainted fate is a virtual currency. The press release you're reading even makes the distinction between virtual currency and loot box, so these things are not the same. You don't "open" an acquainted fate to obtain an 5 star, you "open" a banner and obtain objects of varying rarity. The banner is the loot box.
I personally like the gacha system. I spend almost nothing in the game, and take the resource planning as part of the game itself. But I understand that most players wont be able to deal with it in a healthy way
Yupp. Also i think the only thing that will change will be, that hoyo puts a sort star symbol next to the banner (like the fate point) stating that hey your next 5☆ is your character
I know you’ve been playing for a really long time and your characters have nothing to show for it if you think that this gacha system is fair
@@iikendollGacha has never been fair, but i also think that in a game like this, account progression (including getting pull for gacha) is basically one of it's gameplay system, and there are many people that play specifically for this reason, it is predatory but IMO you should already know what you're getting into, tho i guess unlike FGO community that always warn you that it's hell you're walking into, genshin community just promote their game like it's your average 60$ game
@@deonardomendez9426 that would not address the fact that Hoyo has done adequate due diligence to ensure they were not selling to a minor. To comply with COPPA, companies must obtain "verifiable parental consent," meaning they need to take reasonable steps to confirm that the person providing consent is actually the child's parent. A star will not do this. Hoya is not allowed to sale crystals to anyone under 16 without parental consent by this judement.
I'd agree if... the fan talk baaed patterns and predictions actually made sense....in other words you could actually plan your savings.
But alas... HOYOs totally inconsistent rerun schedule makes this moot.
100$ to not even gaurentee a five star is insane
Not to mention 5050, which is like paying for a Steak dinner then getting Salad instead… The banner shows the promotional character only to just give you a Day 1 standard character.
THIS IS THE REAL ISSUE
being a fan of these Content Creators, is difficult, because we never take into account the real addiction to FOMO prevalent in the teen-spere
And then for many other countries outside of the U.S it literally becomes more absurd
@@ChrisUchiha7In India it's the monthly salary of many people it's insane
I don't think this is the issue here.
Theu can make a thing cost 1000$ and still be fine.
Meanwhile Valve has been running a casino for well over a decade and no one bats an eye
maybe check the news. all sorts of class action lawsuit against valve going on right now becuase of that
I only heard from Coffeezilla.
The difference is that you don't have to buy Valvogems to get keys to open boxes lol
Well, here in the Netherlands we can't buy/open cases, because it has been banned.
Ofc, Genshin is evil and predator and has no pity and you cant get any chars free. Valve, Epicgames, and MMOs are all very ethical.
So only Hoyoverse?? All gacha games do this exact same thing lol... they been coming for gacha games for over a decade now and it hasnt changed 1 bit... you have to buy genesis crystals to convert to primos to get fates... same way you have to buy casino chips to gamble at a casino... If the individual isnt paying attention to how much they spend, why is that Hoyoverse or even gacha gamings fault... There will be no changes, this isnt the first time they have been attacked for the gacha mechanics... and now there are even more games with this exact model, pretty much every single one since Genshin... Hell Summoners War is still going without even having a pity system for 2 decades now... you can literally pull hundreds and hundreds without getting a single 5 star... Theres no 4 star pity either... you can pull 100 times and get ZERO 4/5 stars... SW isnt asking for the age of the player before selling the "loot boxes"... the exchange rate is very clear... Genesis/primos are 1 for 1... you get 80 primos per dollar (8080/$100=80.8)... it cost 160 per pull, so each pull is $2.00 (rounded up)... They will not put the characters up for sale, they will not put the fates up for sale, at most they will rid genesis crystals and allow you to directly buy primos, which are already a 1 for 1... So that will change NOTHING... Gambling is bad for those with an addiction, but anything for an impulsive person with little self awareness is bad... EVERY company feed off some sort of need/desire... No I dont agree with how easy it is to purchase genesis crystals... It only takes me a few clicks and boom I can do 5 more 10 pulls... I have self control and plan how much ima spend over a period of time... i get the character or not, it is what it is...
It is a massively popular game from a foreign nation that the US has strained relations with (on a governmental scale) so it is an easy target. It will have more impact on the gacha industry than going after a smaller game.
Let me preface my next statement by mentioning that I've been playing Genshin since launch (still play) and have spent some money. Gacha IS gambling. It uses the same systems, tactics and costs real money. They don't let kids play at a casino and frankly someone under the age of 18 shouldn't even be able to make an account for a gacha game. That is a change that needs to happen (though there isn't a full proof way to do that). Even if you are f2p these kinds of games still normalize the act of gambling to the player. That in itself can mess with the impulse control of a still developing brain.
I do agree that the most likely change will just be removal of genesis crystals (and probably only for the NA server).
@@Nowaylarry the rules in the article literally said you cant sell lootboxes without providing an option to buy them directly with money.... seems like they just want to shit on hoyo for the sake of shitting on hoyo
you are trying to vouch for a billion dollar company that still benefits off people's addiction.
This game exposes children to gambling and needs to be regulated, just like how casinos are regulated to limit children's access to it.
@silentpeppers47 Thats... kind of the point of gacha games. To profit and hook players via 'the grind'. Its shitty but atleast it isnt as bad as other games like pjsk for example, who dont even have things like pity systems to prevent people from spending too much. Its merely a slightly less shitty evil than the many other evils out there. Ofc the system is insanely fucked up and nowhere as fair as the system in other hoyoverse games, which are much more generous and dont force you to gamble, but its not like the devil made genshin themself.
If the FTC wants to crack down on gacha games, good for them. But atleast go for every gacha game instead of the big one with foreign relations, while also doing little to no research on the actual game gacha system. The reason why I say this is that its insanely obvious from the article wording that the FTC did nothing to truly look into Genshin, and just wanted to fine a game with foreign relations (or some FTC guy wanted a raise.)
@@silentpeppers47 Same with WW , HSR , NIKKE , ARKNIGHTS , PGR , FGO . But Genshin is popular , this awaits every game .
It’s $2 per pull. It’s the first thing I calculated before my first purchase… considering the chance it’s extremely expensive.
It’s not really for the faith of the people, if it was then there would have been crack on subscription models and inclusion of more popular games i.e. COD, CS2, LOL and more.
Though, I’m not against it. It’s just disappointing that it isn’t full scope.
So they also received similar appeals
Roblox (majority of games have lootboxes), and all major Gacha’s has lootboxes and they have yet to get in any trouble. My guess that they’re targeting the major earning gacha companies and saying “It’s for the children”
@Ronald_ly6it's obvious that they are not doing it for the children they just want money
So to clarify
They’re not punishing gacha games for being online gambling
They’re punishing them because Americans inherently cannot do math?
Yes. I think you got that point right XD
here's a suggestion: go study a little bit about predatory game monetization, dark patterns and addiction before you make such an ignorant comment. but seriously do real research, spend a day reading scientific papers on it. you'll see just how much evil crap goes into the monetization of this game. every single mechanic and design choice in it is tailored to manipulate the user into spending more money than they would otherwise ever even consider wasting in a single game. dark patterns like hiding monetary value behind arbitrary currency conversions plays a huge role in that. so don't downplay it while insulting a whole country out of the blue for no reason. you're not in a great position to mock other people's intelligence with a comment like that.
More so they're punishing Gacha games for being Chinese
Nah, they are punishing them because they are a Chinese company and the game is popular. I guess it is also for the COPPA violations. That said, gacha games (and games with gambling) should require a valid credit card (not pre-payed) in order to even make an account. That would at least cut down on the number of kids playing them (though it wouldn't stop them all).
@@GraveUypo There's no currency conversion to hide anything behind, Genesis crystals are 1:1 with primogems. There literally isn't a conversion that the player has to do in that case. The only conversion in this entire process is primogems to fates, which is also an extremely simple 160:1 or 1600:10. You can just look at the shop screen and ask "how many times does 160 (or 1600) go into this number I'm looking at" to understand how many fates you're getting.
If you want to talk about evil monetization, there is so much worse out there than 1:1 premium currencies.
It would be funny if the direct purchase of a character or constellation will actually bring in more money for them. It’s like the usb-c standard here in Europe, where apple was forced to ditch the lightning cable and they themselves called it a improvement, but they were actually forced to do it
I’ve said it for a while, but Gatcha games in general should be rated as Adult by content rating people like the ESRB. This article doesn’t say anything in particular about how Hoyo marketed to children specifically other than that because the game is colorful and cartoon-y that it automatically makes it a children’s product and that just doesn’t sit well with me. The game has content where you can gamble with real money, that makes it an adult product and should be restricted as such by regulatory agencies. I think cracking down on Hoyo’s scumminess is only a half-measure that doesn’t fully take care of the problem.
Its not Cartoony necessarily
Its Anime and if you think anime is for kids then well I don't think we have to debate any further.
Although, More solid argument (instead of 'cartoony feel') would be that game itself is rated 13+ on playstore.
@ Generally speaking, I don’t think art style should determine content rating. I’m not sure if you’re arguing if favor of Genshin’s 13+ rating, but to be clear on my stance: Genshin should be an 18+ game due to its gambling content.
@@Shane_A_M I agree with you 100%. I was just saying this recently. Also, in the last year or so, a lot of the story content in the game has gotten...dark. Not things I would consider appropriate for the 12+ rating it has in my country. I'm talking things like suicide and child sacrifice etc. They were always there, but they've been increasing dramatically.
No. It should be M/16+ rating for gachas with pity, and either 18+/AO or completely banned for those that don't. But all the big big gachas without pity are US, so... (Murica being scummier than its competition and not wanting to regulate itself, what a surprise...)
@@Shane_A_M I think I misread your OG comment
I think we are pretty much in agreement
Although I did start playing Genshin when I was minor.
😂
Crazy how the FTC targets Mihoyo but doesnt target companies like EA and Ubisoft. Definitely not bias
mihoyo is a bigger offender to be fair. but you have a point with the FIFA stuff.
iirc the current system EA and Ubisoft use is the result of a prior similar case. So maybe it's only a matter of time before this applies to all of these corps
Parents don’t want kids to become gambling addicts. This is a step in the right direction.
@@halahmilksheikhyou are right
@@halahmilksheikh its funny because gacha game exists for years, and hoyoverse is not the only gacha game out there. surely not bias toward some party.
All games, items and characters that are digital should require a clear End of Service statement/disclosure that explains how companies plan to handle consumer purchases once they no longer support their product. For example if you bought a bunch of characters, skins, etc. in Genshin but one day Hoyo decides they will no longer support the game they need to clearly state what will happen upfront. So before a user can make an in-game digital purchase a company should disclose what will happen to those digital purchases End of Service, even if the statement is as simple as "Users will loose all access to characters, items, and playability when Company announces End of Service." Another idea to reduce obfuscation to younger players is that for any loot box percentage odds less than 1% the odds need to be spelled out, for example if you have a 0.1% chance of rolling something it should say "player's odds are 1 in 1000 (one in one thousand)." Lastly they should not allow FOMO offers for games/skins/items that disappear at end of service. If they allow a player to collect several copies of the character they have to be available permanently on release until End of Service so as not to entice players into further obfuscated gambling.
I'm pretty sure that 'not actually owning anything you buy in-game' is in the user agreement. That more or less covers EoS. Not that anyone reads EULAs. They are more forgotten than the character by the same name.
@@Nowaylarryhaha! Nice one!
I'm still wondering what happened to the people who spent money on princess connect after the eos
@@Nowaylarry Of course they cover the fact you are paying for licenses to digital items in the genshin/Hoyo Terms of Service. The problem is noone reads them because the first thousand words of the ToS are defining parties and legal terms and then it's another 3 thousand words of legal text before it discusses in-game purchases. If every time a user went to spend real money in game they had to read a succinct message "Company does not have an official EoS date, and any digital items purchased will disappear along with access to the game after EoS with no compensation." That might get people used to thinking about these games and the money the spend on them differently.
Forcing companies to make clear statements upfront also lets people know how long the game is expected to be supported and what's going to happen when it's no longer supported. In the past you could buy games and expansions physically, it would be up to you to maintain the hardware and media in order to continue to playing whenever they were no longer in a physical store. Now, much of that is content is controlled by someone else and it's not clear what EoS looks like until it happens. Users are gambling with their digital items as to whether they will be patched for offline mode, carried forward in some sort of backwards compatibility, or just outright no longer accessible. Some games have had their server code released or reverse engineered to continue to let people play on publicly maintained servers. Anyways All of those options are OK for a company to pursue, even just straight up shutting a game down, but they should be required to state up front what their plan is and it shouldn't be buried thousands of words deep in legalese.
Stupid parents are to blame for letting minors use cards. The settlement makes no difference to the average player.
Good. Genshin is one of the biggest games out there. I hope they are going after the other games that are doing this but if this causes some immediate self-regulation I'm good with that too. Pretty small slap on the wrist considering how much they've made through this sleaziness though.
Could say the exact same thing about this entire genre of games for well over a decade now my man.
@@justsomeguy727 Exactly. Which is why it is nice to see them start to come down on them.
we should stop playing games like genshin, who could be one of the best games ever created by mankind, but is deliberately made worse is certain aspects, in order to milk money from costumers
I calculated it roughly by the 60 Genesis crystal:
You need 160 primos for one pull, 60 crystal costs, ~$1 (differences from country and currency. So i will use $1 as an base) that means you're spending $2,66 per pull.
If we are going with the worst case you need 180 pull to get the current banner character so we're taking the 2,66×180 = $478,8 per limited 5 star if you are losing every 50/50 and having 0 pitty.
The cost also works for Star Rail and ZZZ with their currency. But as you can see, it costs a lot of money if you're unlucky, and those games are basically gambling at that point.
I also did the calculations, and the rates actually differ a little based on which top up you chose (best bargain is with the 1980gc at $2.43 per pull, saving you about $42 on the worst outcome) but I agree that the rates are bad overall
@@sio2216 And that's how these companies are trying to lure us player to spent more money.
The worst thing is that I can kind of understand those players
If we compare farming the primos to afford a random 5* to a real job, then getting a random 5* is like working full time for a week (35-40h) while being paid about $3.66/h.
It's understandable how many people who probably already have full-time jobs would rather just pay for the characters even though they are so expensive.
@sio2216 jep
“About half are 18-25, the other half are older”
Me: “Gawd I’m old……”
your account: "joined 13 years ago."
Yep, join the crowd. Hoyo doesn't even list my birth year in surveys any more.
they should improve the rates honestly, let people get more characters and let dolphins get constellations.
pulling on a limited banner should guarantee the limited character and later pulls after obtaining the limited character will have 5050 chances for standard
That's actually a good idea.
they never got rid of daily farm for specifics materials for char/weapon upgrade, they will *NEVER* do something that benefits players but don't improve their cash flow
8:32 They are technically misrepresenting odds since it's unclear how their "consolidated probabilities" are calculated and often diverge from community polled statistics. The capturing radiance in particular states a consolidated probability of 55% but the real rate is consistently less than that without exceptions. It should hover above and below that number between patches if 55% is the true average. They should just release wish statistics as public knowledge for transparency.
The full mechanics of the pity system should also be explicitly stated with full transparency, like how they linearly ramp-up the odds at some point, or how the full probability network of the capturing radiance works. This shouldn't be left as community work. An unsuspecting customer is likely to overspend if they rely solely on in-game information, even if we assume all the numbers they report are 100% accurate. Knowing just the average probabilities still hides your current probabilities.
That's the only real argument for deceptive marketing I could see here, since the odds for capturing radiance and for soft pity are never stated in game. The rest is pretty explicitly laid out for the player.
As for your first point, the requirement has never been for them to show you their work in how they get the probability, they're just required to tell you what that probability is.
@@danielhounshell2526 except that it isn't explicitly laid out for the players. Your odds of getting the character from the banner are never show, for instance. The show odds are just for 5*, then you also have to win a 50/50 to get said char
@@joaovictorrodrigueskosugi6375
They're very upfront about 50/50s though, so that phrasing isn't deceptive.
You know 50/50s exist going in, and you know the odds of getting a 5 star character. That's about as upfront as it gets, honestly. They could certainly state it more explicitly, but the way it is, it's difficult to argue it being deceptive.
FTC is being wayy to vague in this. Theyre just throwing rules at us without telling us which rules hoyo broke and how. Just because they crack down on crime doesn't mean they can be opaque.
I love your videos, and I really appreciate the fact that you take the time to make them. I've learned a lot from you throughout all of your many videos. Thank you!
Great video, as always! For those who are saying "they should've gone after x or y," as Jello Impact mentions, consider that many gacha-game developers will see this and adjust their policies in line. It is a better cost proposition for the US to go after one big player and get concession, than to spread suits out among all. As a result, if the deep pockets of Hoyo cannot overcome this enforcement, it would be unwise for a lower-grossing gacha to ignore this outcome. It is therefore likely others will adopt these requirements to avoid the cost of litigation and settlement. 20 million may not be "big" for hoyo, but it is for many in this space. Thank you, Jello Impact, for the news. Your channel gets better with every post.
Because that worked when they did it to EA. That's Rhetorical because it didn't worked when they did it EA as EA still does the same scummy shit that it was fined for to this day.
Unfortunately, what all this is likely to mean is that the price for characters is going to go up. Like, WAY up. That's not going to matter much to the whales, but to the dolphins it's going to be urksome, and for the free-to-plays it's going to be a disaster. Imagine seeing a price tag of $300 for a Furina constellation. The ftp now has to save longer to get that single character they've been waiting for and have to pass on anything else. And this FTC settlement isn't going to get Hoyo to stop being manipulative with their banner schedules. If anything, the manipulation will get worse to make players feel like they're missing out if they don't pull on a given character *right now*. Need I remind players how long Shenhe and Kokomi haven't been on a banner? Will the Duke ever get a second rerun if you skip him in 5.4? Rerun cycles might be extended to encourage spending out of fear the player might miss out on getting a certain character within a reasonable timeframe.
The whole issue of limited time rewards is going to have to be addressed at some point, because that is the whole foundation of the overspending problem in Genshin and other similar titles.
100% The government fscks up everything that it gets involved in. It's basically a legal mafia.
nah the only thing that'll change is probably removing genesis crystals and letting you buy primogems directly. That and rewriting the banner details to be more clear to the uninitiated. The changes will probably only effect the NA server as well.
@@Nowaylarry I'd view the removal of Genesis Crystals as a good step towards greater transparency. (And it's a pain that you can buy outfits only with this currency.) I just fear that prices are going to be raised to make up for the expected loss in revenue.
Not that I use them, but I wonder if third party Genesis vendors like Lootbar are going to be affected by these changes. Quite a lot of Genshin content creators advertise this service.
Also they may have to remove Welkin Moons which will really suck. I'm basically ftp with just buying Welkin Moons. I try to keep at least 50,000 to 80,000 primogems at all times not letting it go much below that. I plan to pull for Furina and Venti when he runs.
@@Nowaylarry I think there is a Chinese law that makes it so that you can't buy things in games directly with real money
The currency is obnoxious to transfer but all it takes is a calculator to figure out prices and the crystals to primos are 1:1 value so I don’t get it, however I understand this is essentially for the young kids that play and use someone else’s money without understanding the prices. The one thing I wish was spelled out clearer was the ‘soft pity’ odds, as I’ve had a fluctuated experience and it just feels bad sometimes. The rest of the odds are spelled out although in fine print.
No, that’s not the point. Using a calculator to figure out how much everything actually costs is not the point when you’re obfuscating what it really costs on paper in front of their face. Not everyone does this. Even adults.
This is especially true if you’re trying to habitually get them addicted through dark patterns like this method when the direct connection to “this ten pull costs x amount.” is not clear.
If you want to see stats for rolling, it’s also still not fully clear even on the details on the wishing page. So we have averages, but not provided by hoyoverse. Where do these stats come from? The community for these kinds of statistical data. Not the company.
This is part of the bigger problem of the gacha systems with it predatory style dark patterns aimed towards kids and adults alike.
The whole point is that you need a calculator.
I don't need a calculator to play a slot machine, which is all it really is.
No, they can't use the "young kids" angle because the game specifically states only those 13 and older are allowed to play.
This should apply to all hoyo games and Wuwa.
What I'm more concerned about is that this shows parents can't seem to raise kids. Who gave a kid unrestricted access to their own bank account? A parent. These changes are good and they will make the game better, but at the same time this is the same issue as kids spending thousands on Fortnite skins, dumb parents who think giving a kid stuff will have zero consequences
Hopefully they fixed the 4 star situation with this lul
FOR REAL OH MY DAYS ITS SO ANNOYING TRYNA PULL FOR C6 BENNET AND I END UP WITH C17 KACHINA AND C3 DIONA
That would require a Paimon shop rework, unfortunately
a got citlali and only ONE BENNETT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
c4 to c5, and if I buy his c6 from the paimon's shop, *I KNOW* he will be the first 4* to come when I pull in his banner again
I can understand why there doing this but i think its silly kids shouldnt have credit cards
depends on the age i think children should only be allowed to have credit cards if they are over 16 plus have a stable income plus parental consent but im not really well versed in laws about credit cards for minors in the us
It's dumb when these things happen because it's only 20m and then who is the one getting the 20million? the FTC not the people who got manipulated which makes no sense.
Lmao
Yeah that's like when a robber stole from you, the government will get paid, not you the victim. Stupid system.
So who pays for the attorneys of the FTC who have to go to court against corporations who have 20 million to spare? Fines and settlements are not to make whole those who were harmed. They are incentives to change behavior. This was not a class action law suit.
@@user-BodyMindSoul i think you made way to much sense in your statement for the average genshin player to be able to understand it
1 pull = $2 USD (after the initial top-up bonus, when buying the $100 pack). I make sure to always remember this number when buying crystals. Since just looking at primos or crystals themselves it would be easy for many people to over-estimate how many pulls they have.
For the average player, or honestly just the average human, there would certainly be some issues keeping track of all the currency conversions to finally get to the fates. And then the actual probabilities. That would get even worse for a teenager that hasn't even learned basic finance yet and doesn't understand the actual value of a dollar.
I'm glad that they are doing this, for the sake of others. I just hope it doesn't lead to pull cost increases where you can no longer get 50.5 pulls for $100.
8:50 I don't really look for wishing videos, but scrolling through Shorts I stumbled over a few C6 wishing shorts that give the impression that every second ten pull gives a 5-star.
I need to let you know about something you are not aware of:
This has NOTHING to do with protecting children or "players".
100% It's for someone's resume at the FTC. That's it. That's how things work.
yeah but it benefits them either way
@ NO. Absolute L take.
It benefits irresponsible parents that don't want to be no where near their child's life and rather get drunk, high or both.
Let big daddy government take care of my children, I am too busy buying scratch off tickets and cheating on my spouse.
unnecessary fear mongering that just seems topical given the tiktok stuff going on, they're just starting with the most popular gacha which happens to be Chinese, like most gacha actually, but I really don't think this has anything to do with that, at least there's no way to know right now, and it absolutely is a net positive for players
@T-------- I don't care if the government bans Genshin Impact, my problem is the reason they are giving for doing it.
I don't believe for a second the government does anything for its citizens, let alone children. That's pure cap.
It's ironic that they're asking genshin to make it clear what the rates are when every event has instructions and I've given up trying to understand what they mean.
All I heard was some bad faith bologna. I hate that "anime artstyle" is always followed up by "appeals to kids" like thats the only audience thats allowed to enjoy anything anime/cartoon.
While VERY vague about what exactly is the problem, the things they do touch on such as Genesis Crystals being a secondary inbetween currency and lack of real disclosure of odds are good things to pressure Hoyo on. Hoyo relies too heavily on FOMO and they need to be put in their place about it.
Its a shame to see "think of the children" be the angle they chose to tackle this through instead of making parents be responsible for the actions of their children. My parent NEVER let me buy things online. They may have been overbearing but at least they kept me in check so I wouldnt make those types of mistakes.
Real things Hoyo should be forced to do.
- Have a pity counter like ZZZ
- Add a paid GSSR/Selector Ticket like FGO/Blue Archive
- Make 160 primos = 1$
- Make Genesis Crystals be exclusive to buying skins and bundles if they want to keep it around
- Make purchasing Intertwined Fates and ONLY Intertwined Fates a direct purchase
- Add a SSR to the Permanent banner 1 year after release
- Do away with Constellations OR make it so you can purchase them for a set amount (10-20$ ideally for them to earn some money) from either a cash shop OR even better through gameplay like a craftable similar to the Elixirs
Seriously? It's all worthless. At ANY level of regulation. Just let people play what they want and vote with their wallet. What's next? A price cap on how much a movie costs?
I think their decision to make intertwined fates not a direct purchase is to get around gambling laws in other countries.
Wait how does the adding 5 stars to standard fix anything? Does this solve the gacha aspect by having more options to lose to? But that doesnt mean much right? You're still losing 50/50 and getting someone you don't want, even if they're slightly better quality.
And do away with cons? Are you saying constellations are a fomo tactic to make characters not feel like whole characters? I mean some definitely, but can you say that for all characters?
I guess it's a tactic to fomo weak minded children or heavy gacha addicts? Though I thought we were going without the "for the children" slogan.
And I don't want them to give free constellations tbh. They're all super op on modern genshin. Powercreep impact will be a legitimate thing because they don't change old characters much. Yeah they could change the old character, but we didn't bring up the possibility in the 1st place
@Evitzeoshowerthoughts There's nothing to fix because the value of a character is completely subjective. Even $5 on Genshin is technically a waste. People should just spend what they want for the entertainment they want. It's that simple.
@@ipsumlorem3076 lol. Because of regulation gacha games like Genshin can't be 100% scummy. You underestimated how manipulative gacha games can be and how easy it is to create a gambling addiction, especially when said addiction is created during one's impressionable years, it could last for life. Just because you like the product doesn't mean it isn't shitty
6:18 randomly reminded me of the time the gamegrumps posted sponsored video playing genshin and streamed a wish where the animation clearly showed them getting a four star but they cut away to show them having gotten a five star
Okay i agree to a lot of this but have to think and ask, why now? Also, why specifically call out genshin instead of list gatcha games in general? Also regarding the the 20million.... what people rtpically dont understand is while things like that look good at first glance, they're typically bad for the consumer because its not the company who ultimately has to foot that bill, they pass those down onto the consumer usually through price increases and things of the like, it is a very common tactic to minimize loss while still aaving face. Someone ultimately has to pay it. it's almost never the company in the end.
Just like Tariffs. The consumer foots the bill. Tbf though 20m is a drop in the bucket for the company. Even the lowest performing rerun banners make more than that with just mobile sales.
@Nowaylarry yeah, it is a drop in the bucket to a company like hoyo but it's also lost revenue and we all know they want to mitigate that as much as possible. In the end the one who typically gets screwed in a lot of things involving business and goods is the consumer and it blows
A thing that I could see them being forced to do in regards to the "limitedness" of the characters is to give them a more set rerun timer, a shit ton of other gachas have seasonals that come back a specific time of the year or some other type of character that goes to the base pool with very few limited that even then are expected to rerun "often", but Genshin's banner system (Really the hoyo games banners) is so much predatory in the sense that you really have no idea when a character will be back, making you feel more forced to spend if you want them
Biggest examples are Shenhe, Wriothesley and Eula, if you check to see what people online say then you know they're "rare" so if you like them as a character you NEED to get them the very next time they appear or you'll loose out for who knows how long
I appreciate transparency, but if I knew how much I actually spent on Xilonen or Citlali, I'd probably loss my lunch!
Yes, they are misrepresenting odds.
They don't explain soft pity. You didn't know about it and got the 5 star you didn't want thinking at 75 pity you have a 90% chance of being safe and not get one? That's $150 gone right there.
They don't explain the mechanic that alternates weapons and characters instead of each having equal chance on each pull or the consequence of this yielding only a fifth of the expected chance to get an off banner character.
They write "rate up" and "increased chance to obtain" on limited 5 star characters that have ZERO chance to appear otherwise, creating the false impression that the character is obtainable at any time and has a nonzero chance outside the "rate up" banner. (a reminder each character takes 1-2 years to rerun once nowadays.)
They also didn't tell the truth about capturing radiance and made people think it's a flat 5% chance higher to get the limited character when in reality it's a 0% chance that slowly ramps up to 100% the more you lose 50s so it takes many years and extremely bad luck for the average user to ever see the feature do anything. Sure, the net overall average boost 5% but you don't wanna be in that group of players who benefit from that bonus in the first place.
There are probably more but these are the ones I can think of immediately.
This reeks of "old person trying to go after them darn video games but not even understanding the systems in the games they're complaining about". Hoyo has a "Details" page attached to every banner in every single one of their games. And in it they go over exact %'s for drop rates. Can they probably clean it up? Yea totally maybe use a graph to display this information. But to accuse them of purposely obfuscating rates or trying to misrepresent actually drop rates is bizzare.
Lina Khan, the head of the FTC, is in her early/mid 30s. She's the same age or a little older than most content creators on youtube.
iirc the only thing Hoyoverse doesn't tell you about drop rates is that soft pity is a thing, which they probably should include somewhere. Like you say, using a graph would probably be a good way of displaying the chance of getting a 5-star.
Aside from that, I feel like everything is pretty straightforward. You can figure out how much a single pull is with simple math, so anyone who bothers to put in the bare minimum amount of effort and open a calculator can figure out how much they'd be spending.
The real issue is parents giving their kids access to their credit card, or otherwise leaving it unattended and making it easy for their child to steal it.
It is designed to be confusing. They could easily make it 1 dollar = 1 wish, or something.
Honkai Impact has no 50/50 and no fate points. So, why did Hoyo introduce new layers of complexity in Genshin? To confuse people.
Let's review: you buy a strange amount of crystals (like 3,280 for $50) which you then have to convert into primogems for no reason, then you convert them into two types of fates at 160 each, then you pull on a banner where you get either a 50/50 or a 75/25, but actually the 75 is split into another 50/50, but if you lose you get a fate point, but it's only good on this banner, since it doesn't carry over.
Does that seem streamlined to you? How about you pay money for a pull and you're guaranteed to get the thing you want within X pulls. No useless conversions, no 50/50, no fate points, no shenanigans.Just make like a slot machine with easily displayed odds.
@@wallacehoward2792 You're making it out to be a lot more complicated than it is. 50/50s exist in practically every gacha game, that's nothing unique to Genshin or Hoyoverse in general.
As for the Genesis crystals, if they wanted to obfuscate things they wouldn't have made it literally a 1:1 value with primogems. The crystals largely exist to tie outfits into the monetization as real money purchases.
It's pretty much laid out for you upfront that a 10 pull costs 1600 primogems. It's also extremely obvious that the Genesis crystals are 1:1 with primogems. Basic elementary school math allow you to figure out how many pulls you're getting for your money from there, and the odds are all laid out for you in plain text.
The weapon banner is a bit overcomplicated, but it's also not that hard to intuitively understand how it works. You have a 75% chance of a five star being one of the two on the banner, and it's 50/50 which of the two you'll get. If you don't get what you want, you get a fate point, and the next time you pull one of the two weapons on the banner, it'll be the one you want. The game is very upfront about those odds. You can discuss whether or not those are good odds all you want, but the claim is that the system is deceptive, which I just don't see here.
As for fate points not moving between banners, that's also not unique to Hoyoverse games, and the way it's presented it's pretty clear that it doesn't transfer over, so it still isn't deceptive.
@@danielhounshell2526😂😂😂😂
That 20m is probably chump change to how much money they've made from this game. Still if it effects not getting english VA's back for longer because of money concerns than that really hurts
oooooo here is the tea
tbh, genshin already displays the odds to get smt pretty well (even makes them look worse than they are, since they dont talk about softpity ingame). Meanwhile Fifa (or eafc) exists...
being able to purchase fates directly would be a nice improvement still
The displayed odds for a rate up 5* are the consolidated odds. It takes the soft pity into the equation. This means that the odds before reaching soft pity are actually lower than the stated %. They aren't lying about the odds but it is misleading with just their banner details page to go by.
@ yeah, i mean just the fact that the only pity they name is 90, while in reality almost noone even pulled to 90 pity due to soft pity and you can assume that 90% of the time you get the 5 star before 80 pulls, which is better than the 90, since they make it sound like you often get to 90 (pretty bad/outdated writing that hasnt been updated ig). Still even having a pity system, a system that guarantees the rateup char aswell and the new system that prevents many lost 50/50 in a row too is kinda luxury if you look at other games like fifa, which is like compelete casino…
Being a free-to-play player is pure bliss 😅
Maybe in this niche part. 😂 Rest of F2P life is pure torture
F2P players having played for years and still not being able to get the characters they want when they want them or still not being able to clear endgame is pure bliss.
@@iikendoll being a f2p from 5.0 onwards is worth as fuc*. Getting only premiere natlan supports/carrys
a f2p account with only xilonen and mavuika can get any end game content easy as f
Maybe that's why i don't understand the problem that much
Genshin was my first Gacha. When I first started, I found the system of getting wishes confusing. For $15 you get 980 genesis crystals, except the first time, when you get 1,960. Why not just make it 1000 and 2000? Whatever. Then you convert the genesis crystals into primogems. So, why not just sell primogems? Whatever. Then you convert primogems into Acquaint fates or Intertwined fates at 160 primogems each. Why have two different fates? And why 160 and not 150, or even 100? Why not just sell the fates directed for dollars? Why not 15 dollars=15 fates?
Then I realized it was designed to be confusing. It's like how a casino makes you turn your dollars into chips, so they feel less like "real" money. I'm used it now, of course, but it's definitely designed to confuse people into spending more money. Especially kids.
Kids don't have any money.
We gonna have to give China our ID's to verify 😅
download Red Note 😂
Well a valid credit card (that isn't pre-payed) would at least cut down on the number of kids playing the game. Honestly any game with gambling requiring real money should require one to even make an account.
@@Nowaylarry nonsense. I should never have to own a credit card to be able to play anything
@@Nowaylarry The main attraction of GI is the fact it's completely clearable f2p.
8:20 "misrepresenting odds" on every banner, there is a "probability increased!" thing written on it, and it actually means "increased from ZERO" because you can't pull the character otherwise? I guess? because i too felt disappointed when the "probability increased" wasn't real when I was a new player
Do we get anything out of it?😂😂
Nah, this is a nothingburguer, if anything it will make it more annoying to do pulls in-game because we'll have to convert the currency like 2 times before being able to pull
No, at worst they remove some f2p primos to make up the 20m they paid 💀
well they an just region lock the game .
@@Samachi727 that's already what we have to do and that's what they are trying to revert. (blue crystal thingies -> primogen -> faiths)
Nope. But the FTC managed to get 20 million for free.
Thanks for the info and thoughts. Loved this video.
not gonna defend hoyo cuz gacha in itself is predatory- we all know.
but when people with power get involved with restricting stuff their not doing it for the peoples benefit, but just to restrict cuz they want money & have more of a hold on people. theres a reason their doing this and its not for "the children!!". :/
I think the part about deceptive odds is related to the 50/50 system, making it harder for players to understand the chances of getting the rate-up five-star.
That is nothing! What will change if you get 1600 gems for 20 USD and they add an option for 10 fates for the same price?
new players will know that $100 doesnt give not even the necessary amount for soft pity. And no, no one should have to do calculations to see how is their money being translated to the game currency
@@joaovictorrodrigueskosugi6375 But it's not changing anything other than give more info how not worth spending on anything other than walking is. If you ask me, even the battle pass is not worth the money.
I really love your content. You’re honest and you admit that you know Genshin is predatory in some way, and you’re glad that it is changing. Every time I watch your videos I am astounded by the level of care you give and the way you word yourself to give the people their best chance at getting a character. Your videos give people the objective opportunity to see how character banners line up with each other and their worth, which I think is really great.
I think they need to be clearer with how the banners actually work when the banner system is unlocked. And they need to make sure that people are reading it. Either a timer or making the tutorial/informational screen full size would help with this I think
I find it kind of telling that they go after Mihoyo first before even touching Fortnite. You wanna talk about targeting children and dark patterns? Epic somehow gets away with it and for the life of me I don't understand why.
why. why is it telling? god. stop defending the multi billion dollar company built on exploitation of vulnerable people. they have to start somewhere. genshin is one of the best places to start, and they're actually mega late to the party, they should have done this in version 1.2
There’s literally an entire lawsuit that happened almost 2 years ago that they’re still dealing with today about that exact topic are you kidding me
roblox is more predatory than genshin, all stupid mini games in roblox is cost money
"charging whatever price they want." hell no, they should charge what is reasonable.
Good😈now we wait for the reparations