The game Genshin Impact was recently mentioned in the TV program “1818 Golden Eye” due to a refund dispute involving a minor player.
1818 Golden Eye is a local TV news program on Zhejiang TV in China. The program usually starts at 18:18 each day, giving the program its name.
In the program, it mentioned the case where Mr. Zhang found out there were unusual payments on his phone, and it turned out his son was secretly spending money on Genshin Impact. When Mr. Zhang tried to request a refund, HoYoverse rejected it.
Some may already know that China has a Game-time restriction on minors and also limits the maximum payments they can make in-game. But in this case, the restriction did not work. The account was registered with Mr. Zhang’s personal ID, so, technically, it was considered an adult’s account. His son had also somehow acquired the password to his Father’s banking card.
That was the major obstacle to the refund; HoYoverse claimed that they could not tell whether it was a payment made by a minor player or an adult. But after a one-month discussion, HoYoverse agreed to reopen the refund process for Mr. Zhang.
Actually, similar cases are happening all the time. In March 2022, Mr. Tang told The Paper that his son using his wife’s bank account, spent 12K CNY on Genshin Impact. And another boy in Xi’an spent 30K by using his grandparent’s ID and card. In May, a lady in Suzhou made a complaint to HoYoverse because her son spent over 25K in the game, and she could not get a refund.
On the complaint platform Blackcat, there are 2872 complaints about Genshin Impact, and at least 136 of them are requesting refunds for payments made by kids.