Don’t play chicken with a global pandemic
KFC was forced to close several restaurants in China this weekend after many Impact Genshin players showed up to participate in the fast-food establishment’s crossover event.
KFC announced that it would offer exclusive products Impact Genshin pins and in-game items for customers who showed up and shouted the phrase “Meet in another world, enjoy delicious food!” in the restaurant staff. However, as reported by Kotaku, KFC stores in Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou districts were overrun by fans. Despite the authorities’ best efforts to maintain crowd control, the meetings were found to violate China’s particularly strict COVID-19 regulations, forcing partial abandonment of the event.
As observed by industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, COVID-19 numbers are currently relatively low in China, making the country safer than several other large international communities. Regardless, running an in-store promotion for one of Zeitgeist’s biggest video games as a world pandemic still in place is somewhat irresponsible. I’m sorry for the poor idiots who were in costume portraying Impact Genshin characters Diluc and Noelle. I hope they got out of there before they were invaded by fans, hugs and selfies.
In-game event items are expected to be made available to all players later this summer, while physical pins have very limited availability. As such, these are highly sought after items in the Impact Genshin community, which is currently estimated at around 30-35 million players.
These people waited all night for the KFC x Genshin Impact collaboration in China. This location is Nanjing.
Fans can get a special meal under the Genshin Impact brand, in-game content and an exclusive KFC brand badge / badge.
I’ve never seen anything like this before for KFC, lol pic.twitter.com/a5DtSYpodJ
– Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) March 13, 2021
