Genshin Impact: new skins and changes are censorship requested by China?

Genshin Impact

Genshin Impact has received in the past few hours the expected update 2.4 and, with this, also the announcement of several new features including new alternative skins and changes for some characters, which could represent real censorship requested by the government of China. , which has rather targeted the success of MiHoYo in some specific aspects of the new regulations in the way of video games.

As we have seen, with version 2.4 the announcement of the upcoming arrival of 4 alternative skins has also come for Mona, Jean, Rosaria and Amber, who do not change the appearance of the characters that much but undoubtedly result in more opaque clothes and less visible skin, which seems to fall within the new guidelines imposed by the Chinese government for video game characters .

The fact that the change of clothes, which would be much less skimpy for the four fighters, is mandatory only in China suggests that the update ento has been an urgent patch put on by MiHoYo to avoid running into problems with the internal regulations of the videogame market. On the other hand, the planned changes do not concern only the skins but also some animations of the characters, as well as the movements of the camera in some situations.

Among the novelties there is in fact one in particular that makes the transparent characters if you move the camera below them while they are in flight, evidently to prevent the vision of "hidden" parts and prevent it from becoming revealing for some areas of the characters' body.

Genshin Impact, some of the new clothes imposed in China Similarly, MiHoYo has reported that he wants to make further changes to the "transition animations" starting from the next updates, as well as new costumes that will arrive in version 2.5 and they are likely to be more opaque for other characters as well.

It is very likely that these changes were made to fall within the guidelines of the CCP, so much so that the development team has decided to reward Chinese users with 1200 Primogems for the disturbance, far more than reserved to Western users to whom the changes are not mandatory.

Last September, China changed the approval process for video games with more restrictive guidelines also regarding the appearance of the characters: they are considered particularly critical the female characters too undressed but also the male characters judged too "effeminate", among which an example used by the CCP is precisely Venti by Genshin Impact, another probable subject of further future changes. Given the diffusion and visibility achieved by the game, it is very likely that MiHoYo will have to resort to further changes even more stringent in the next updates.

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'Genshin Impact' Is Starting To Censor Some Of Its Women Characters

Genshin Impact

miHoYo

Genshin Impact quietly announced a somewhat odd change right before patch 2.4 launched this week. Four of its women characters, Jean, Amber, Mona and Rosaria, would be getting new “alternate outfits” for free.

This is unusual for a game that never gives anything away, but fans were quick to notice that these outfits appeared to eliminate certain...provocative elements of the original outfits (on the right). Jean has a buttoned up collar. Mona’s swimsuit-like outfit turns into shorts. Rosaria no longer has fishnet stockings and a less form-fitting top. Amber…I can’t really tell what they changed with Amber. It looks like they just made her chest smaller?

This follows something weird players noticed in the run-up to the release of Shenhe, a new character that just released. Her original art had a visible bellybutton, but closer to release, that was erased.

What’s going on here is not an attempt for miHoYo to be “woke” or anything like that. In a forum post announcing the change, there were indications that this was in order to comply with Chinese regulations about “decency” in games. Though later, the part about complying with regulations was edited out of the post. Still, the fact remains that while these outfits will be optional in almost all regions (you can keep using the original look if you want), on Chinese servers, the old outfits are being deleted, and players are getting 1,200 Primogems as compensation.

We are used to Asian games coming from mainly Japan, not China, so we never really run into situations like this, as no such laws exist there. But Genshin Impact is a wholly Chinese production, and now it seems its popularity has stumbled into a few tripwires with the Chinese government.

It seems incredibly likely that if these four outfits were selected for a “redesign,” that more are sure to follow. I have no idea what is considered “inappropriate” or not by these regulations, but just off the top of my head, I’d be pretty surprised if we didn’t see characters like Beidou, Ganyu, Lisa, Yoimiya and even Lumine, the main character herself, get some sort of “censored” redesign like this, given their current outfits.

Beidou

miHoYo

Additionally, I wonder if anything might happen to the game’s men as well. China recently issued an order to crack down on “effeminate” men, mostly aimed at pop stars, but I do wonder if that could extend to video games and some of Genshin’s characters. It does seem…a tiny bit odd that Genshin’s last male character was Itto, a burly guy with abs, the first time we’ve seen that aesthetic in the game, a short while after this decree was issued.

Viewing this from the West, none of this is…great. While the gaming industry is always debating whether video game characters being portrayed as attractive is progressive or regressive, one factor in that argument is never the government stepping in to dictate whose shorts are too short or whose chest is too large. Given this situation, I would expect more Genshin redesigns to come, and I would not be surprised if we started seeing more conservative designs overall.

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