Genshin Impact sneaks in a new US age verification process amidst Version 5.6 release

As we covered last week, Genshin Impact Version 5.6, Paralogism, has launched, bringing with it an amusement park, a new Archon Quest, and two characters. Twas cause for celebration, but under the cover of all the revelry, Hoyoverse has sneakily put out an age verification process that all US players must follow.

You might remember that back in January, Hoyoverse settled with the Federal Trade Commission in America in a case of deceiving players and violating children’s privacy. That’s broad strokes that we won’t dive too deep into, we covered it over on our sibling site AppSpy at the time. Either way, it feels like this may be a continuation of the measures put in place then.

I am particularly referring to children under 16 not being able to buy loot boxes without parental consent. How would HoYo know the player ages? This age verification, of course. When you log in past May 20th, you will be required to complete this process. Everyone will have until mid-July to comply or face some pretty stringent consequences. 

If you haven’t before July 18th, you will be hit with an Account suspension, and the deletion of your in-game friends and chat records. I presume this part is to do with COPPA regulations and HoYo needing parental permission to delete the personal information of children under 13. For those who don't complete it by July 20th, it is literally game over, as the personal information of your HoYoverse account will be deleted permanently.

It is a pretty big deterrent, losing your account, so if you ever have an inkling of playing again, make sure you complete this. There hasn’t been any outline on what this process will be, but, and this is pure speculation, I imagine it will be a simple drop-down box. In England at least, not all under-16-year-olds have ID, so what is HoYo going to do? Make its players get identification, or ban them and lose revenue? I think not.

Genshin Impact is available to download from the App Store and Google Play.