Genshin Impact teamed up with KFC to offer special branded Kentucky Fried Chicken meals and in-game goodies across their restaurants in China. According to Reddit, the problem is the event proved so popular it drew huge crowds in several cities, causing the country’s current Coronavirus regulations to be triggered and some events to be cancelled outright.
The collaboration had already been running for a few days. Ordering a meal either online or in store will get players rewards like a KFC branded glider skin, a custom recipe and stickers until March 21. However, the latest extremely limited reward that drew all the crowds to the restaurants were the limited Diluc/Noelle Maid pins available only during last weekend. To get one, customers had to approach the counter and say “Meet in another world, Enjoy delicious food”.
Very few badges were allocated to each restaurant, leading to players camping out overnight to stand a chance of getting their hands on them. Photos posted by people like @ZhugeEX on Twitter showed large crowds outside restaurants, and in cities like Shanghai and Hangzhou those crowds became so big the events had to be cancelled. While China has more or less returned to normal after managing to control the outbreak of Coronavirus, large crowds still force some measures to be taken to prevent its reoccurrence, hence the cancellation.
The Chinese-developed game continues to be incredibly successful, taking just 12 days to reach profitability and having the biggest international launchfor a Chinese title. In January alone, the game raised $153.4 million in revenue just on mobile platforms. It was the fourth highest grossing mobile game worldwide behind games like Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile, and 25.7% of that total came solely from China. Version 1.4 is due to be released later this week on March 17, bringing the Windblume Festival to celebrate the arrival of spring and a new character called Rosaria “Thorny Benevolence”.
