"Genshin Spends 2.4 BILLION on Freebies" — But NGA Players Expose the Ridiculous Math Behind the Clickbait

Three free in-game items worth 2.4 BILLION yuan? NGA users couldn't stop laughing.

The controversy erupted after Chinese social media was flooded with headlines claiming Genshin Impact "splurged 2.4 billion yuan" on free gifts for all players. The original NGA poster dropped screenshots of the coverage and asked the question on everyone's mind: is this for real? How exactly do three free items get inflated into 2.4 billion yuan?

So how did they arrive at that absurd 2.4 billion figure? One commenter broke down the math: take the highest UID number in the game to estimate total player count, then multiply by the virtual shop price of the three free Acquaint Fate (纠缠之缘, the game's gacha pull currency) given away. In other words — it's purely hypothetical value times hypothetical player numbers. Not a single yuan of actual money changed hands.

Once the methodology was exposed, the thread went full roast mode. One legendary reply suggested: why not just add a new item priced at 10 billion yuan and gift it to everyone? Tomorrow's headline would be "Genshin donates an entire US GDP." Another user piled on: those Acquaint Fate are way too cheap — just jack up the price 1000x and you can write "Genshin splurges 2.4 TRILLION" — truly a nation's wealth at their fingertips.

The best takedowns came from cross-industry comparisons. One user applied the same logic to e-commerce: by this math, every Taobao flash sale with a "spend 200, save 30" coupon could also be framed as a "24 billion yuan giveaway" — just multiply user count × coupon value × usage rate. The punchline? "Pinduoduo: I literally spend 10 billion, are you even trying?" (PDD's notorious "10-billion-yuan subsidy" campaigns suddenly seem modest by comparison.)

Beyond the math getting dismantled, players had no mercy for the media either. One commenter noted that Sina (新浪, one of China's biggest portals) has a track record of stirring up drama around miHoYo — though this particular article was described as a self-own that "deserved to be clowned on." Another analyzed the failure from a PR angle: if the company had just framed it as a version update gift, it wouldn't have sounded so absurd — but whoever wrote the copy set them up for this roasting.

Not everyone was just memeing, though. One thoughtful reply cut to the core issue: the media wrote it as if miHoYo actually shelled out 2.4 billion in cash. Why do people always treat players' potential spending as the company's own money? Getting "less profit" isn't the same as losing money — and discounts are literally a standard marketing strategy.

Meanwhile, a separate but related data point was making the rounds: Genshin reportedly lost 2.5 million followers during this period. A commenter sarcastically posted "2.5 million followers gone, they're really hemorrhaging" alongside a reaction image — the implication being that if miHoYo really had money to burn, maybe they should've spent some on not losing their audience.

To sum up this certified NGA moment: media outlets used a "hypothetical player count × item shop price" formula to turn three free gacha pulls into a 2.4 billion yuan marketing spectacle. Players countered with Taobao coupons, Pinduoduo subsidies, and a hypothetical 100-billion-yuan item to prove how nonsensical the math was. Not a single yuan was actually spent, but 2.5 million followers actually left. If that isn't the textbook definition of reverse marketing (逆向宣传, PR so bad it backfires), nothing is.