Genshin Impact exploded onto the gaming scene in 2020, quickly building a global player base of over 100 million people with its lush open world, charming character designs, and regular free content updates. But scroll through any gaming forum, Reddit thread, or Twitter comment section about the game, and you’ll quickly run into harsh, unfiltered criticism from a vocal subset of players. It’s not uncommon for new fans to ask why is genshin impact hated by so many people when it seems so well-loved by the community that plays it regularly. I’ve logged over 800 hours across PC and mobile since launch, so I’ve seen both the best and worst sides of the game firsthand. This piece breaks down the actual root causes of the negative sentiment, separates valid criticism from unfair backlash, and gives you context to decide for yourself if the complaints are dealbreakers for you.
The Main Criticisms That Explain Why Is Genshin Impact Hated by Some Players
Most of the negative feedback about Genshin Impact doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s built up over years of design choices that prioritize profit over player experience for parts of the audience, and missteps from developer HoYoverse that left communities feeling ignored. The most common grievances fall into a handful of consistent categories that come up again and again in player surveys and community discussions:
It’s important to note that not every player cares about all of these issues. Casual players who only log in a few times a week to explore and do quests might never run into the endgame drought or resin restrictions that frustrate hardcore players. But for people who invest dozens of hours a week into the game, these pain points add up fast, leading to the widespread negative sentiment you see online.
Is the Gacha System Justification for Hating Genshin Impact?
The gacha system is by far the most common criticism of Genshin Impact, and for good reason. The game’s pity system guarantees a 5-star character every 90 pulls, but there’s a 50% chance that 5-star will be a standard character instead of the limited banner character you’re actually trying to get. If you lose that 50/50, you have to pull another 90 times to guarantee the limited character, which adds up to around $200 worth of Genesis Crystals if you’re paying for pulls. The weapon banner is even more predatory, with lower odds and a system that requires you to pull three 5-star weapons on average to get the specific limited weapon you want.
For players on a tight budget, this system can feel extremely unfair. I have a friend who is a college student, saved up 3 months worth of free primogems to pull Nahida, one of the most useful support characters in the game, and lost the 50/50 to Qiqi. He quit the game the same day, and I don’t blame him. It’s hard to stay motivated when you put months of work into a goal and lose it to pure random chance. The limited banner rotation makes this even worse, as popular characters only come back once every 6 to 12 months, so if you miss them, you have to wait almost a year to try again.
But it’s also fair to point out that the gacha system is entirely optional for 99% of the game. You can complete every single story quest, explore every part of the map, and earn every event reward using only the free 4-star characters the game gives you. The only content that requires well-built 5-star characters is Spiral Abyss Floor 12, which only gives you 600 primogems (around 4 pulls) every two weeks as a reward. If you don’t care about that small bit of premium currency, you never have to touch the gacha system at all. So while the gacha complaints are valid, they’re often overblown by people who act like you can’t enjoy the game without spending money.
Endgame and Progression Frustrations That Fuel Negative Sentiment
Another huge source of frustration for long-time players is the game’s restrictive progression systems and lack of meaningful endgame content. The resin cap is the biggest pain point here: you only get 160 resin per day, which refills at a rate of one every 8 minutes. That means you can only do around 4 to 6 domain or boss fights per day before you run out of resin, and if you don’t log in every 8 hours, you’re wasting resin that could be used for progression. Many players feel like this system forces them to log in multiple times a day just to avoid wasting resources, turning a fun hobby into a chore.
Once you’ve completed all the open world content in a new update, you’re basically stuck grinding artifacts for weeks until the next update drops. The artifact RNG system makes this even more frustrating, as you can spend months farming the same domain and never get a single artifact with the right main stat and usable sub stats. I’ve been farming the Emblem of Severed Fate domain for my Raiden Shogun for 3 months now, and I still haven’t gotten a single Crit Damage Raiden cup with decent sub stats. It’s demoralizing to put dozens of hours into grinding with almost no tangible progress to show for it.
HoYoverse has made small changes to fix these issues over the years, like adding a resin converter that lets you turn extra magic ore into resin, and an artifact transmutation system that lets you turn useless 5-star artifacts into new ones from a set of your choice. But these changes are band-aids, not actual fixes. The game still has no repeatable endgame content outside of the Spiral Abyss, which hasn’t had a major rework since launch. For players who have been around since the first year, this lack of innovation is a big reason they’ve moved on to other games and speak negatively about Genshin Impact online.
Community and Cultural Factors That Amplify Negative Feedback
Not all of the hate for Genshin Impact comes from actual players of the game. A lot of it comes from external community tensions and unfair generalizations about gacha games as a whole. For one, Genshin Impact has a very large, very vocal fanbase that often goes out of its way to praise the game as the best open-world RPG ever made, and trash other popular games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom or Final Fantasy XVI as inferior. This kind of toxic fan behavior leads to a lot of resentment from fans of other games, who will lash out at Genshin Impact even if they’ve never played it just to push back against the toxic fans.
HoYoverse’s history of mishandling community backlash has also contributed to the negative reputation. Back in 2020, when Zhongli was first released, he was extremely underpowered, with a kit that didn’t match the marketing materials and was basically useless as a main DPS. Players protested for weeks, flooding social media and review bombed the game, before HoYoverse finally agreed to buff him. Similarly, the first anniversary rewards were so bad (only 10 free pulls for a year of support) that players review bombed the game into the 2-star range on the Google Play Store before HoYoverse added extra rewards to make up for it. These missteps have left a lot of players distrustful of the developer, and more likely to assume the worst about future updates.
There’s also a widespread perception that all gacha games are predatory by design, even if they offer hours of free content. Many gamers who only play buy-to-play titles refuse to even try Genshin Impact because they assume it’s a pay-to-win scam that will force them to spend money to have fun. This isn’t true, but it’s a common belief that leads to a lot of unfair, uneducated hate for the game from people who have never spent more than 10 minutes playing it.
At the end of the day, there’s no single answer to why is genshin impact hated by some players. A lot of the criticism is completely valid: the gacha system is predatory for players who want to collect every character, the endgame is severely lacking for long-time players, and HoYoverse has a history of ignoring player feedback until it’s too late. But a lot of the hate also comes from unfair generalizations, toxic fan behavior, and people who have never actually played the game and are just following the latest trend of bashing popular titles. If you’re considering trying Genshin Impact, don’t let the online hate stop you. It’s a perfectly fun, completely free game if you’re just there to explore the world and enjoy the story, and you never have to spend a single cent if you don’t want to. If you’re a more hardcore player who cares about endgame progression and collecting every character, the complaints are probably worth keeping in mind before you invest dozens of hours into the game.