Honestly, free-2-play economics are so baffling that nothing they do surprises me.

There’s a Genshin Impact McDonalds collab where you have to buy a very specific happy meal to get some in game wings (which I very much want) and some other garbage. I actually considered just buying the meal and giving the food to someone else (homeless?) because I can’t eat that crap on my diet. But instead, I settled for telling everyone around me that I want the code if they get one, and I’ll just hope.

How does that help Genshin Impact? I imagine it helps in the same way as this nonsense physical copy. People get excited about physical copies, even in normal boxes, and they get excited about exclusive items that can’t be obtained any other way. That pulls in a little money directly from the sales of the plastic, but it also creates a ton of buzz around the game like this whole thread.

I think. As I said, it’s pretty baffling. I have to file it under “there’s no such thing as bad PR” most of the time.