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A few hours ago, Genshin Impact started a Twitter campaign that aimed at getting the CEO of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk, to play and stream the game.
This immediately resulted in a controversy amongst the playerbase, and the challenge eventually backfired, which led miHoYo to take down the tweet soon after.
The deleted tweet read:
Dear Travelers, To celebrate reaching 2 Million followers and then some, Paimon has decided to host a community challenge! Follow Ella Musk @Paimon2theMoon and check out the image below for what will happen when each milestone is reached!
- When 500K fans follow, @GenshinImpact will be renamed back to Paimon
- When 1M fans follow, @GenshinImpact will follow @elonmusk
- When 3M fans follow, @GenshinImpact will invite @elonmusk to stream Genshin Impact
- When 5M fans follow, CEO Dawei will invite Elon Musk to visit miHoYo HQ
Including Elon Musk as part of the community event left fans bewildered, even though Genshin Impact has a relatively minor NPC called Ella Musk, whose name is often considered a reference to Elon Musk himself.
Ella Musk, Elon Musk and the disdain of Genshin Impact's community
In the game, Ella Musk is represented as a scholar who wants to learn the Hilichurlian language so as to communicate with the Hilichurls. miHoYo set up an alternate account in her name, @Paimon2theMoon, which primarily deals with representing community art and other in-game tidbits about Genshin Impact.
The community challenge revolved around fans following Ella Musk on Twitter. After reaching a certain threshold, Genshin Impact’s official handle would not only have followed Tesla’s Elon Musk but would also have invited him to play and stream the game. It would have also hosted him at miHoYo’s headquarters after Ella had received 5 million follows.
This community challenge did not sit right with the fans at all. In light of how poor the year-one anniversary rewards were, players were expecting a bit more appreciation from miHoYo than calling a big personality to play the game.
Having Elon Musk play and stream Genshin Impact does not help the community in any way. Hence, fans felt this challenge was a slap in the face, and many did go on to voice their opinions about how disappointed they are with miHoYo.
Of late, the Genshin Impact community feels that no matter how big the outrage or backlash, miHoYo will not listen to their concerns or feedback. Players, both free-to-play and pay-to-play, have invested a significant amount of their time, effort and money in the game.
The amount of appreciation and rewards they got for it is rather disappointing, to say the least, and having community-challenge events like these will not help the developers make peace with their fan base any time soon.
