User-created games are coming to Genshin Impact in a new mode that couldn't be more Roblox if it tried

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MiHoYo's version of Roblox was inevitable⁠—Genshin Impact is huge, but it's not Roblox huge. In pursuit of greater horizons to conquer, the anime action game is going to get its own mode where user-created stuff is king.

You can hang out and emote with other players in an open area called the "Wonderland Lobby". In the next major patch, update 6.1, this place will be decorated with jack-o'-lanterns and candles, but I assume it'll change with every season.

The main draw of the new mode is all the minigames you can play. There will be a whole Roblox-style catalogue of user-created games spanning several genres, including FPS, roguelike, management sim, and survival. Creators set up the rules and can even include achievements and leaderboards if they want.

All of this seems explicitly targeted at the people who may not care about Genshin Impact, but would be down to try a bunch of different games within the engine. It's so disconnected from the regular game that it's hard not to cynically see it as a play for the kids who grew up with Roblox and want to move onto something a little more complex.

The editor for creating the games looks very robust: MiHoYo shared clips of a designer placing and resizing familiar objects from Genshin Impact as if they got their hands on developer tools. It even has options for changing what skills characters can use and how they appear. There are also preset stages you can load up as a foundation to build off of.

Whether or not MiHoYo's signature of gambling for your favorite characters factors into this mode is unclear, but I guess it could be a gateway to the HoYoVerse for anyone who hasn't played one of these games before. Roblox already has rampant issues with child safety that are increasingly facing legal scrutiny, but parental controls or any kind of privacy settings weren't discussed in MiHoYo's stream.

MiHoYo says it's been working on this mode for quite a while and it shows. It will go live when update 6.1 launches on October 22.

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Tyler Colp

Tyler has covered videogames and PC hardware for 15 years. He regularly spends time playing and reporting on games like Diablo 4, Elden Ring, Overwatch 2, and Final Fantasy 14. While his specialty is in action RPGs and MMOs, he's driven to cover all sorts of games whether they're broken, beautiful, or bizarre.

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