Genshin Impact devs were very upset over Zelda clone accusations

Genshin Impact is one of the most popular games around these days, but early on, one could argue that it struggled to find its identity with many comparing it to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The initial harsh reception seemed to have done a number on the development team.

During the Genshin Impact FES event, miHoYo president Lie Wei spoke about what it was like at the company when a video of the closed beta was released. Many didn’t really seem to understand what the title was going for, and again, the Zelda comparisons came about very often. Things were probably at the absolute worst at ChinaJoy in 2019 in which some fans protested and someone went as far as to smash their PS4 during the event.

Wei had this to say, as roughly shared by Twitter user tokinohikaru_00:

“When I put out the closed beta I was pretty proud, full of hope and thinking we did well but the closed beta’s response is, it’s like it’s different from our assumptions, it’s completely different. So when we did the closed beta we faced an unprecedented crisis. Everyone just saw the video of the closed beta and said, ‘we don’t really understand what Genshin is trying to do.’ Not many understood, and there were a lot of misunderstandings. So at the time, in our team, everyone was really worried. I remember many young colleagues crying and saying to me, ‘Why is this happening? What did we do wrong?’ But this youthful innocence – you could say we are fearless. We thought and acted.”

Genshin Impact originally launched in 2020. miHoYo previously committed to a Switch version, but it’s unclear if and when the game will reach Nintendo’s platform.