The most important Genshin Impact petition, which was initiated last year, may have just met its end, and its outcome is not positive in the slightest. The action RPG was originally released in 2020, and since then, the community has been drawn together to make several requests to developer HoYoverse. The problems with Resin in Genshin Impact have been a point of contention for players, for example.

This is because this directly affects how much people can farm, which often leads to grinding – and worse, limitations on how much you can grind. There are still several long-lasting problems with the game, such as the RNG behind Artifact drops, which HoYoverse has been slowly addressing. Players can now craft their own Artifacts and even see the hidden sub-stat in pieces, for example.

Genshin Impact’s Diversity Petition Reached Thousands Of Signatures

The Game Has Been Accused Of Whitewashing

There is, however, one underlying issue that hasn’t been addressed yet, and that is cultural representation. Before the official release of Natlan in 2024, players united to make a petition for Genshin Impact to include more diversity in its character designs. While the game has had an issue with the lack of ethnic representation in its game since launch, the problem became even more evident with Natlan.

This is because the Nation of War drew inspiration from Mesoamerican and Western African countries and their cultures. The locations, assets, and even character names were all based on these cultures. However, the character designs from Natlan did not reflect the people who inhabit these real-world regions. This led players to accuse Genshin Impact of committing whitewashing with its characters.

The petition that requested more characters representing people of color garnered dozens of thousands of signatures during its first few days and is currently at over 126,000 signatures (at the time of writing). This monumental union among players even reached several voice actors for characters in the game, who supported the petition and started asking for more ethnic diversity to bring an end to HoYoverse’s alleged colorism practices.

HoYoverse Hasn’t Changed Its Approach To Genshin Impact Character Designs

Natlan Characters Were Predominantly White

Despite how popular the petition became, HoYoverse seems to have turned a blind eye to it, as not only did it not address the initial complaints, but most of the Natlan characters released afterwards were white. The only characters with slightly darker skin tones during this period were Ifa and Iansan — though players did complain that their skin tone was whitewashed from what it should have been.

In addition to not addressing players’ requests, HoYoverse didn’t even respond to the situation, leaving the petition as nothing but a hopeful thought for the future. While it lacked a popular petition at the time, Sumeru’s release in 2022 also prompted players to request a wider range of ethnic representation in cultures, as the Nation of Knowledge is inspired by South Asian and Middle Eastern countries and cultures.

Like in Natlan, characters from Sumeru were also whitewashed from players’ perspectives, as the allegations are that they should have had darker skin tones to better represent the people from those regions. As such, it seems like HoYoverse is unwilling to tackle the subject at all, despite how much the community requests it. Now, it may have the perfect excuse to not attend to those requests.

Nod-Krai Crushes All Hope For Representation In Genshin Impact

Nod-Krai Is Inspired By Slavic & Scandinavian Countries & Cultures

The argument used for requesting more diversity and ethnic representation was based on how the game drew inspiration from those cultures, which also led to the accusation that HoYoverse was using cultural appropriation. However, now away from Natlan and Sumeru, the company could potentially rest easy, as it has moved onto the Nod-Krai region in Genshin Impact.

This autonomous region within the confines of the nation of Snezhnaya is heavily inspired by Slavic and Scandinavian countries, whose populations are mostly composed of white people. As such, representation for it means more white characters. With the security of the cultural usage of predominantly white countries, HoYoverse may not bother to create more darker-skinned characters.

With the proper arguments for more representation having been ignored during the Natlan era, it’s very unlikely that HoYoverse will make an effort to attend to these requests solely for the sake of diversity. It would be extremely important anyway, but with the community’s strongest arguments dying off with the introduction of Nod-Krai, it seems like ethnic representation is a long-lost dream for players.

Nod-Krai itself is unlikely to have darker-skinned characters, and the next area we should go to is the larger portion of Snezhnaya, which is based on Eastern European countries. After that, it’s expected that the campaign will take players to Khaenri’ah – or at least the remnants of the fallen civilization. The representatives from both Snezhnaya and Khaenri’ah, so far, are white characters, like Childe and Dainsleif.

With HoYoverse having seemingly ignored the largest and most important petition for the game to date, it feels like all hope is lost for better diversity and representation with the characters. It’s upsetting, considering how much of a global audience the game has.

It would be great to see that audience reflected in the characters you can control. As much as Genshin Impact is a great game, there’s still a lot to improve, and diversity should be the priority right now.

Systems

Released

September 28, 2020

ESRB

Teen / Alcohol Reference, Fantasy Violence, In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items), Users Interact

Developer(s)

HoYoverse (Formerly miHoYo)

Publisher(s)

HoYoverse (Formerly miHoYo)

Engine

Unity