#boycott HYV

[rice-fae]

Boycott hoyoverse, please.

I used to be a big genshin impact lore buff, i played, i read, i was on forums, i made fanart, and then i was deeply disrespected by the game itself (this post is about natlan)

I am brazilian and i follow a religion named candomblé. Long story short, its from yoruba people who were sent to brazil as slaves, then went through a big process of spreading out to not just black people, but light-skinned people of lower classes like my family. We believe in the creation by Olorum, the power of Axé, and the Orixás.

Natlan, as of now, has two characters named Iansan and Ororon. These names come from not just the yoruba predecessors of candomblé, but also the religion itself, the Orixá deities Iansã and Olorum.

My religion, my deities. My mother's deities. The statuettes in my house. Their names are recycled cheaply to be used trivially. Never have we of candomblé ever gotten mentioned by AAA games or films that give such attention to detail like Genshin does, and we are disrespected. Our Gods are used like rags for someone's profit to be thrown away, washed out. They do not convey our beauty, our grit, our wonder, they do not convey us but they profit from us.

People love to tell us that it is just a game, but think again: games are not entitled to disrespect us just because of their nature. We are entitled to complain, to scream, because this is cruelty. You brutalize our image, butcher our names, for what?

When I was younger, I used to look at games with religious imagery very curiously. It was always weird to see the faith of the people I know be used for aesthetic reasons or just because it looks cool. The same has now happened to me, but times worse. People will say anything to justify this mockery and throw excuses to keep playing the product of a corporation that won't ever understand what it means to be us.

Boycott, complain, scream, because I will do it too. I regret the time I invested in playing, in reading, in watching, in dedicating myself to something that would never do me justice. It is not expensive to change a character's name, not even talking about the model. I don't plan on re-entering the fandom while it still lies unaware of the gross source material's true colors. Candomblé is not mythology, it's faith. We are alive. We have existed for centuries and will continue to grow, despite the challenges we face.

[glasscereal]

Citlali redesign cuz as a Mexican with a passion for prehispanic cultures im disappointed LMAO

[hyvboycott]

With upcoming release of Natlan, this serves as a reminder of how the characters were made pale to uphold colorist beliefs

[eclaire-went-bam]

man i just KNOW the people who are saying "they don't have to give natlan characters melanin bcs natlan is BASED off south america, not actually south america!" liked the french furina memes

[oldfruitloop]

There is no war in Natlan just white people.

[outivv]

Another fresh reminder is that boycotting Hoyoverse/ mihoyo ≠ quitting any of the games!!

Play the games, unless you are literally so uncomfortable with it that you can’t even bear to play which I can completely understand, but to further cost Hoyoverse money- it’s smart to play the game while not spending any money. Server costs will go up for Hoyoverse by more people playing the game for longer, while the income they roll in will go down due to not as much money being spent, which will land them in shit as a business and slowly cost them more and more and more money!! So, if you’re boycotting that doesn’t mean you have to quit, just stop spending any money or supporting hoyoverse!!

[genshinincorrectly]

after the Natlan trailer, a hoyoverse boycott has been organized on Twitter. I will be participating in this boycott and using my following to spread the word.

here are the guidelines from the official Twitter account. as per the guidelines, if you respond to this post with racism, you will be blocked.

this boycott is not only for genshin, but for all of hoyoverse’s games, including Honkai Impact 3rd, Honkai: Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero.

here is the link for the official Twitter account, and their carrd for more information.

[the-pyooster]

can I be intrusted with these guys

[c6scaramouche]

If anyone is interested in seeing someone else's message to HYV customer service in order to use or inspire your own, here is mine:

I used parts of Anilyan's template and personalized it to me!

Upon further advice, it would be best to make messages more succinct and to the point!

Dear Genshin Impact Team,

Regarding the skin color discussion started by the reveal of Natlan characters:

We fans understand that the world of Teyvat is fictional, and that the Nations and characters are informed by different real cultures that end up being mixed to create a fictional setting. But it’s also undeniable that some Nations in the world of Genshin are primarily inspired by some cultures more than others, and that character traits tend to reflect the main countries the Nation they inhabit is based on. Nothing in this world is truly without reference and disconnected from some culture, even if it is conglomerated into a fictional setting. 

We see and appreciate all the hard work that has gone into creating and bringing to life such a robust and beautiful game. Thus, it’s a shame that all that effort is being drowned by the obvious racism and colorism reflected in the Sumeru and Natlan designs. It would make sense to have characters with significantly darker skin tones in Natlan and Sumeru, and many fans hoped for that with the new upcoming region.

It is blatant disrespect to ignore the African, SWANA, Rroma, and Indigenous cultures by stealing many aspects of these cultures, such as landscapes, names, music, clothing and fashion styles, without properly representing the skin color and ethnicities of these peoples. 

Please, significantly darken their skin tones. And please properly correct and respect the words and names of these cultures’ deities.

I have played Genshin Impact every single day since I started in version 1.1, and spent roughly thousands of dollars on characters I love and cherish, all in support of your game which brings many people happiness. Unfortunately, me and countless others are no longer willing to monetarily support and play Genshin Impact and other Hoyoverse games because of the clear lack of respect for proper representation of skin color diversity. 

Hoyoverse has proven capable of changing and adjusting their values over time - we still believe you can recognize your mistake and fix it. You are a company that heavily supports fan and fan works, and who constantly invests in things that have a positive impact in society, which is why many people like to support you, and why this is so disappointing to see.

I know myself and many others are eager to see positive changes, because the Natlan characters designs have so much potential. 

Do not let this taint your legacy. Tech otakus were supposed to change the world, remember? And perpetuating colorism is not how you should do it.

I would be immensely grateful if my feedback were forwarded to the appropriate departments- I appreciate all of the customer service workers' hard and dedicated work. 

Thank you for your time and consideration,

[rice-fae]

do you think that sumeru is just as bad as natlan? i was so upset when people stopped talking about it

Sumeru is bad. It's pretty, I'll give it that, it was my favourite nation when I used to play the game (I mained Faruzan), but it has its sum of terrible things

I don't know much about the source material, aka the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. My post was about Natlan because if there's something I know about is my homeland.

I regret overlooking the signs hyv gave us of its racism early on, in 3.0. Seeing the Natlan trailers and leaks really opened my eyes on how I was being the kind of person that doesn't speak up on bad things when they happened to others. I don't wish that upon anyone. I hope we can have our eyes open for other games showing these signs in the future.

I won't "rank" that kind of thing because 1. I know next to nothing about Sumeru's source material (except for my share of self study in it's pattern art history) and 2. Natlan is not out as of now. I think it's bad, but I don't actually know much beyond the whitewashing.

I hope Hoyoverse didn't use their Gods' names similarly with how they dis to us, yoruba and candomblé. I can't remember. All my love to my brothers and sisters around the world, in those places!

Thank you for the ask!

[fransfranart]

Haikaveh Gotcha Donation Requests July 2024

I participated in @/hkvthm_action in order to help as an artist spread the word on Gaza! Donations are still available and as of now, they end on the 9th!

Details below in the links.

Twitter @/hkvthm_action

Twitter Donation Form

[hyvboycott]

Due to visible growing dissatisfaction among the playerbase, we have branched out to Tumblr as well! This account will provide information on the HoYoverse boycott

[outivv]

Hi hi!!

This is gonna be a whole guide on how to and how not to boycott hoyoverse!! Also to answer some questions and educate people as best as I can!!

Firstly: why are we boycotting hoyoverse?

Mainly because Hoyoverse has (and is continuing to) ignored the complaints people have about the lack of representation and diversity in the entirety of their all their games, including Zenless Zone Zero, Tears of Themis, Honkai: Star Rail, Honkai impact 3rd, and mainly Genshin Impact. They also have a history of being racist in all of those games, and flat out refusing to give playable characters diverse skin tones.

Why is this bad?

Taking cultures for aesthetics in a video game is just… blatantly racist, and there’s no excuse for Hoyoverse to do this, because there are other Chinese companies that have made dark skinned characters. To name a few, Riot games, Lilith games, and Bluepoch. Hoyoverse is known to take cultures for their games but not give proper representation, make slavery jokes, be passively racist and stereotype cultures, and just overall be… not greatttt.

Can I still play Hoyoverse games?

Yes! Play Hoyoverse games, interact with fan content, just do not give any money to Hoyoverse! That’s completely like… counterproductive to what we’re trying to do here which is make Hoyoverse lose money, so they fix their issues!

How to boycott!! (I got a lot of these from @ nyaamari on Twitter, whose post inspired me to make this thread!)

Dos!:

Do spread awareness as much as you can!

Listen, and educate yourself based on the people whose cultures have been outright stolen by Hoyoverse.

Submit complaints through the in game surveys or feedback.

Email Hoyoverse! Specifically genshin, at genshin_cs@hoyoverse.com

Encourage others to speak up, and inform others who play Hoyoverse games!

Repost anything informative!

Review Hoyoverse games on the App Store! Don’t go review bombing other games, just Hoyoverse owned ones!

Don’ts:

Argue with racists and colorists! Keep yourself safe, and block if they are refusing to let you inform them, it takes a want to learn on their end to actually take in any info!

Speak over other people of the cultures Hoyoverse has stolen from!

Spend any kind of money on any Hoyoverse games. No welkin, no top ups, no battle pass, or nameless whatever- nothing! Show them that we will spend money on their game if they give us characters that have some actual color and representation to them!!

Buy any official merch from Hoyoverse collabs!! Also use this as an excuse to support a small business that isn’t partnered with Hoyoverse or anything and get some sick ass merch from them instead!!

Harass Va’s and assume they haven’t spoken up! A lot of Va’s have spoken up already, and are completely on our side with this one!! Just please don’t harass them, the Genshin fandom specifically has a notorious issue with harassing Va’s.

Follow @ HYVboycott on Twitter!! They have a petition on their page that already has 25,000+ signatures as I’m making this!

Also please don’t let the Hoyoverse boycott deter you from any of the boycotts going on for Palestine, or just what’s happening in Palestine in general. Remember what is happening, stay informed, don’t stop talking about it just because we’re talking about Hoyoverse. I’m gonna start spreading more info about Palestine on this account cause it’s my most followed social media, and I wanna spread more awareness.

[thecutesyfishtank]

Someone say sike right now

[the-pyooster]

I like to think that he uses Ororon as an alias (maybe he's a criminal or smth idk), meanwhile his actual name being Ọlọrun :)

[blazingblorbos]

It’s.. fascinating in a brand new way (a terribly disappointing way) to see HoYo fumble the bag this fast.

I was contemplating making a post about this a day or 2 ago, mostly about the Natlan explosion, but then Moze’s drip marketing happened… and suffice to say I think there’s a bit more substance for me to comment on 🫠

I’ll start with Natlan and try to articulate the thoughts properly, since both my own thoughts and my intake of others’ views has had a couple days to settle in my mind:

I wanna preface with the fact that I love Hoyoverse. I really, really do (I desperately wanna work for them, actually, lol. It’s a dream of mine). And I think that’s obvious to people who have seen a couple of my posts.

But it’s precisely because I love them so much, hold them in such a high regard, and respect mostly everything about them, that their recent performance has just left me deeply…. Disappointed.

Sheer, RAW disappoinment makes up the bulk of my feelings and attitude towards what they’ve been doing recently: which is not listening to their community where it REALLY matters. I was present when the uproar over Sumeru happened. I was disappointed then too, but at that time I more-so existed as a confused outsider observing what was going on (I am a poc but not SWANA). Everything about it — from the large-scale disrespectful mix of many cultures, to the 💀 TERRIBLE idea to not pronounce Tighnari’s name correctly AT ALL, to the abhorent lack of melanin in characters (that are DIRECTLY inspired by figures hailing from African countries) — was… bad. REALLLYYY bad. But I’ll be honest when I say: the way I rationalized it in my brain was “Well, they did add more dark-skinned characters to the roster! I guess this is just their version of ‘darker skin’ ” (which, by itself is already a terrible thing BECAUSE they take care to try and represent real world cultures faithfully).

So the fact that it’s happened again. And worse (SOMEHOW⁉️⁉️) is something that’s making me realize how lackluster it was before. And I am desperately rooting for a change. Fool me once, shame on me type shit genuinely.

Now.. in regards to Moze (Star Rail)’s EN VA 🫠. Everything I know about that man I learned in the past 24 hours. So all I will say is that EVEN if he’s worked to better himself, having been BLACKLISTED from the industry (BECAUSE THE CRIMES WENT ON FOR A DECADE!! MIND YOU) means it is way too fuckin soon to hire someone like that again 💀. They took action against Tighnari’s original VA, so that they’ve done this now is… weird…??? I’m just really confused, yo.

Edit, as of July 25, 2024: Chris made a post on his twitter claiming he has chosen to step down as the VA. 🫡 Step 1 is a W, congratulations everyone 🎉