Genshin Impact Developers to Implement Age Gate and Parental Controls Later This Month
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- Cognosphere will implement an age gate and parental controls for Genshin Impact later this month for US players.
- The studio will start rolling out the age verification process on May 20 and will give players until July 20, 2026, to do so.
- Those who don’t verify their age will have their accounts deleted.
On May 6, Cognosphere announced that it will add an age gate and parental controls to Genshin Impact on May 20 due to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requiring it to do so. Every player in the US who does not verify their age by July 2026 will have their Genshin Impact accounts deleted.
Earlier this year, Cognosphere was hit with a complaint from the US Department of Justice. The FTC’s post about the case mentions that Cognosphere has “actively marketed Genshin Impact to children and collected personal information from them in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA).”
The FTC continued by saying that the studio has deceived players regarding the odds of winning five-star characters in the game. “The complaint alleges that Genshin Impact’s purchasing process obscures the reality that consumers commonly must spend large amounts of real money to obtain ‘five-star prizes,’ and that some children have spent hundreds or even thousands of dollars to win them,” the FTC’s post reads.
A day later, Cognosphere released a statement mentioning that while it believes that “many of FTC’s allegations are inaccurate,” it still went ahead with the settlement “because we value the trust of our community and share a commitment to transparency for our players.”
Genshin Impact was released on Sept. 28, 2020, for mobile, PlayStation 4 and PC. A PlayStation 5 version of the game followed in April 2021, and an Xbox Series X|S version followed more than three years later. The game has received various awards, including “Best Mobile Game” from various award shows.
