Joshua Robertson is a News Editor for TheGamer. When not writing about breaking news, community stories, or covering industry events, you can find him begging FromSoftware for a Bloodborne remaster.
Where Winds Meet has been the talk of the town recently, thanks to its goofy AI chatbots and demonic geese, with some declaring it as one of the best games to release this year. Along with promises that the game would never become pay-to-win, developer Everstone Studio managed to get itself in a good position to be a hit with players and keep them on board. Unfortunately, Where Winds Meet has now been hit with its first potential backlash, and just like with Persona 5: The Phantom X earlier this year, it all revolves around what many perceive as preferential treatment towards the game’s Chinese server.
It all started when Where Winds Meet’s new Sword Unseen outfit was added to the game, which came in the form of a gacha that players would need to roll to gradually unlock each part. Every roll increases in price as it goes, and if you wanted everything in the bundle, you’d eventually have to drop over 7,000 Echo Beads. It’s pretty standard gacha, but the issue comes from how the outfit was made available on the game’s Chinese servers.
Where Winds Meet Players Accuse Game Of Unfair Global Server Treatment
On the Chinese servers, the Sword Unseen outfit is a flat purchase of 2,580 Echo Beads, meaning the outfit has almost tripled in price for its global server release. Understandably, this has angered a very large portion of the game’s fanbase, who are making their voices heard on social media platforms like Reddit. In fact, one of the highest upvoted posts on the Where Winds Meet subreddit called on others to “push back harder against this kind of practice”, and that global players are being “treated unfairly.”
Later on, Everstone seemingly reacted to the backlash quite quickly, promising to offer up compensation, which came in the form of a progress reward tree that gives players extra items for each piece of the outfit they unlock. Sadly, this hasn’t been enough to placate many fans, who are demanding that the price be dropped down to the same price as the Chinese server. As of the time of writing, that hasn’t happened.
Thankfully, the backlash has done some good to potentially stop this from happening in the future. For starters, players on the Chinese servers have banded together to complain about the treatment of global players, which should put a bit more pressure on NetEase. Secondly, it has already been claimed in the game’s official Discord that the developers are going to try and keep the price of outfits on the global and Chinese servers the same, though this isn’t exactly a promise that it won’t happen again.
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That being said, it’s good that players were so quick to call out the company and potentially risk the good start that Where Winds Meet has made in the West, while it’s also good of NetEase to act so quickly to quell fan anger. Hopefully, something will be done in the next few days to bring the price of the Sword Unseen outfits down to the Chinese server levels, or at least compensate global players in some kind of meaningful way.
Teen / Use of Alcohol, Violence, In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items), Users Interact
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