HoYoverse is Under Fire Once Again Over Genshin Impact’s Male Characters

With the eve of Fontaine drawing ever near, Genshin Impact also anticipates its new Fontaine Character Lyney to be well-received as after three years, players will finally get the chance to pull for the elusive magician twins. While they may not be the 2-in-1 package some had hoped for, they do prove to have some interesting personalities and kits. Not even a few days after Lyney’s trailer was posted, the community noticed there was some odd analytics going on in certain regions.

Korea’s Genshin Impact Trailor for Lyney Receives Overwhelming Dislikes

There is no requirement in the game that states that every character needs to be liked, but the number of Dislikes to Likes ratio on Lyney’s Trailer for Genshin Impact in Korea was alarmingly high. Comments underneath the video stated that the reason why Lyney was so disliked was because of his accessories like the garter belt on his legs, the straps on his arms that resembled bra straps, and the overall depiction of him as a feminine man.

The video has since seen a leveling out, whether due to people withdrawing their dislikes or the Korean Genshin Impact account itself removing certain comments. This comes as a shock to the community since such backlash has not been seen from the community even dating back so far as other feminine or gender-ambiguous characters like Venti. However, there was another case similar to this in another region.

Not even one-month prior, Chinese players were discussing their hatred of another highly anticipated character, Scaramouche or the Wanderer as he is later known. Stating that they hated the way he was arrogantly portrayed, Wanderer’s Banner had seen the lowest earnings in China than every banner before it with petitions even made to try and remove the character from the game entirely. The company was not excluded in this backlash as Scaramouche players also reported being mocked or bullied for owning or liking the character. Allegedly, some incidents went so far as to attack dark or black cats since Scaramouche had an Official Art of him where he and many other members were depicted as cats.

Related: More Artifact Changes Are Coming to Genshin Impact in Fontaine

Genshin Impact is HoYoverse’s first game that caters to a vast array of people, and thus has characters that lean towards certain demographics of interest to promote more players to play the game and spend money. So, characters like Scaramouche and Lyney may not always be popular with some of the male populace. However, Genshin Impact has a large number of women who play the game and genuinely enjoy this style of character design. This doesn’t even begin to cover the LGBTQ+ community as HoYoverse has openly played with portrayals in past and present games. So, of course, game developers want to have a diverse roster of characters to cater to their core audience and appreciate their diversity.

The Genshin Impact community has not always been perfect, but the backlash of Scaramouche’s Banner and the mass Dislike ratio on Lyney’s trailer does give rise to concern. These are, after all, only a cluster of pixels on a screen. Players should take caution when allowing other players to enter their world and remember that you do have the ability to kick them by entering the Co-Op Tab in the Menu.

The worst outcome that may come of this is reduced appearances from these characters due to the fact that HoYoverse themselves have not come forward with a statement regarding these issues. But that’s going to be kind of hard to do when Fontaine is going to require Lyney’s presence. Because of this, we can only keep an eye on the situation and report back with what we learn.