HoYoverse has announced that all US Genshin Impact players will soon be required to verify their age if they wish to continue playing the gacha action RPG.
Per an announcement on its official website, HoYoverse will require you to go through its age verification process to play Genshin Impact. The process will be rolled out to everyone across the US by May 20th.
You’ll need to provide your age information by July 18th. Failure to do so will, according to HoYoverse, result in account suspension and “in-game friends and chat records” being deleted, as well as “no further notifications”, since you won’t be able to access your account anymore.
What’s more, if you don’t verify your age by July 20th next year, your HoYoverse account’s personal information “will be deleted permanently”, so naturally, that’s a fate you’ll want to avoid.
This requirement likely comes as a result of a decision made by the FTC back in January, wherein the commission found that HoYoverse “violated a children’s privacy law and deceived children and other users” about in-game transaction costs and rare prizes in Genshin Impact‘s gacha system.
The decision required HoYoverse to cease selling “loot boxes” to children under 16 without their parents’ consent and also to pay a $20 million fine to “settle FTC charges”. It’s likely the new age verification process is a direct result of that ruling.
Despite the fact that the gacha systems in Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero are very similar to those found in Genshin Impact, it doesn’t seem that the ruling applies to those games; it’s likely they’d need to be assessed as their own cases.
As for what’s next for Genshin Impact, the game’s next major update, Version 5.6, launches today. It takes you back to the land of Mondstadt, where your adventure began, in order to enjoy an “interlude chapter” before the next story chunk proper gets going.
