The open-world action RPG Genshin Impact offers gamers a magical experience in the otherworldly land of Teyvat, where cats can talk and godlike beings walk disguised as men. However, it appears that the company behind Genshin Impact, miHoYo, has more earthly concerns. Recently, fans of Genshin Impact noted that the game's verified Twitter account had followed NFT two accounts without warning.
Non-fungible tokens, shortened to NFTs, refers to a process where virtual items including artwork or in-game items are attached to a one-of-a-kind digital signature. While the art can be copy/pasted or otherwise re-used by others, only the owner has the digital signature, which lends it a sense of scarcity and value. However, as industry personnel like Troy Baker have discovered, NFTs are a highly controversial subject in the gaming world.
Redditor lugiaop recently shared a screenshot drawing attention to the fact that the verified Genshin Impact Twitter account had decided to follow two NFT accounts. This is interesting because as of writing, the Genshin Impact account is only following eight accounts in total, and the other six are all affiliated with miHoYo's gaming catalog. As Genshin Impact is already a gacha game, it's possible that the developers are considering adding NFTs to the game's existing random draw systems.
The verified Genshin Impact account is now following the ZombieClub and 2426C NFT accounts. At the moment, it's unclear why this decision was made or if it was even intentional. The current focus on NFTs in the gaming industry could imply that Genshin Impact is planning to get in on the action, but this decision could also be the result of someone running the official social media account forgetting to log out before hitting the follow button. However, a previous Genshin Impact controversy involving Elon Musk seems to suggest that the game wishes to be involved in the tech and cryptocurrency markets.
As of writing, it appears that many Genshin Impact fans are not impressed by its new connection to NFTs. One user theorized that an intern interested in cryptocurrency forgot to log out of the verified account, while a second user described Genshin Impact's efforts to get Elon Musk's attention as embarrassing. Another group of users began discussing the possibility that this was serious and what would that mean for Genshin Impact's future, especially since China has reportedly banned crypto transactions. A third user stated that a wave of hackers has been targeting big Twitter accounts and getting them to follow crypto accounts without changing anything else, which could also be behind this.
Genshin Impact is now available on Mobile, PC, PS4, and PS5. A Switch version is in development.
