Genshin Impact has earned over $100 million in two weeks despite being a free game

Free-to-play RPG Genshin Impact has made over $100 million in less than two weeks after launching, reportedly covering its development costs and then some.

You might've heard about this new open-world game, which launched on PC, mobile and PS4, simply because of a supposed similarity to Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but there's more to it than that.

Now the game is making headlines for another reason – even though it is free to play – it now seems like Genshin Impact is "the most successful launch for an original IP from a Chinese developer" of all time, according to a senior analyst for Niko Partners and prolific games industry tweeter Daniel Ahmad.

Ahmad wrote in a tweet: "Genshin Impact has now grossed over $100m in less than two weeks. China, Japan, Korea and the US are top markets for the free-to-play game".

He went on to explain that the game was the number 2 highest-grossing title globally on iOS in its first week, writing "According to data from App Annie the game was downloaded more than 23 million times on iOS / Andriod in its first week".

PC Gamer made the point that the game's budget was roughly around the $100 million mark, which means the developer has seemingly regained any cost they spent making the game in 12 days.

If you're unfamiliar with Genshin Impact, it follows a simple free-to-play model where the base game is totally unlocked from the start, you can just spend money in the in-game shop which features a gambling system known as Gacha.

Gacha is a Japanese term for a capsule-toy vending machine; essentially this means that you spend money on something and only have a chance of getting the thing you want.

While gacha games are thought to be a form of gambling and rather addictive, it should be noted that Genshin Impact doesn't throw its gacha system in your face at all.

Just by playing the game, you're awarded the means to earn premium currency completely for free, which you can then use up in the in-game shop to have a chance at unlocking new characters and other goodies.

This does mean, in theory, you could comfortably play the game without spending a single bit of your real-world money and still unlock things in-game by earning the currency through playing.

Genshin borrows a lot of ideas from a bunch of different games, more noticeably for us, for example, we see the clear influences taken from Nier.

Simply based on its looks, it's easy to say the game is similar to Breath of the Wild, but it's somewhat erroneous as this stage if you've actually played it and scratched beneath its surface, revealing something which is extremely different to the Legend of Zelda.

Genshin Impact is available to download for free on PC, PS4, Andriod and iOS.

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