Some players and game journalists have persistently accused the game's developers HoYoverse of perceived cultural appropriation and discriminating against people with dark skin colors through the game's character designs. This started in April 2021, when it was noted how the only dark-skinned playable characters at the time, Xinyan and Kaeya, were described in-game as "exotic" and "scary" respectively. The release of version 3.0 in August 2022 introduced the Sumeru region, which while being based on cultures from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, depicted many playable characters and NPCs from the region as being light-skinned. In March 2023, the character Dehya was released; while hailing from Sumeru and being one of the few dark-skinned playable characters in the game, she faced similar accusations due to some fans perceiving her abilities as underpowered and dysfunctional. In July 2024, HoYoverse released a trailer announcing they would be adding a new region to the game named Natlan, which was inspired by pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, Africa and Polynesia. The character designs used for Natlan were once again criticized due to the majority of the characters being depicted with light skin despite the darker-skinned native races of its inspirations. The difference this time was that seven of the game's voice actors also joined in the criticism, including Khoi Dao (Albedo), Zeno Robinson (Sethos), Valeria Rodriguez (Sucrose), Jenny Yokobori (Yoimiya), Alejandro Saeb (Cyno), Allegra Clark (Beidou), and Anne Yatco (Raiden Shogun).

In October 2021, Chinese voice actor Li Yuantao was accused of having multiple affairs and using his fame to manipulate multiple girls into having sexual relationships with him, some of whom were reported to be minors. Because of these accusations, several popular mobile titles announced that they would be severing ties with him, such as the dating simulator Light and Day, the survival horror game Identity V, and the action RPG Genshin Impact. The latter game responded by removing the character Fischi from the game's rate up system for one year, as Yuantao voiced Fischi's raven companion Oz.

On January 17, 2025, it was announced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that Cognosphere (who does business in the US as HoYoverse) had agreed to a $20 million settlement for selling loot boxes to children and collecting their personal data without parental consent in Genshin Impact. According to the FTC, Cognosphere had "deceived children and other users about the real costs of in-game transactions" by requiring them to buy virtual money in the game and subsequently collected their personal information in direct violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Terms of the settlement include the company not being allowed to sell loot boxes to children, requirements to disclose the loot box odds, and deleting all the personal information of users under the age of 13.

During The Game Awards 2022, the final two rounds of the Players' Voice award (the only award of the show to be determined entirely by the public) were effectively a toss-up between the top 2 games: Genshin Impact and Sonic Frontiers. Unexpectedly, fans of both games became highly adversarial, accusing each other of bribery and vote rigging by using bots, and facetiously perpetuating their opposition's claims to inflate the controversy. Some accused voters for Genshin Impact of rigging the results under the belief that they would receive in-game currency should it win, something that had previously occurred after the game won the award for Best Mobile Game in 2021, while others noted a sharp increase of thousands of votes for Sonic Frontiers among other games in the API data on The Game Awards' website after the controversy gained steam. Despite this, there was no credible evidence of bots or bribery on either side, and host Geoff Keighley assured that his team would investigate the matter. The brigading and online arguing became noticeably popular on Reddit, to the point that the subreddit r/SonicTheHedgehog had to restrict any posts related to the controversy. In the end, Genshin Impact won the award. Keighley jokingly referenced the incident during the event, and all Genshin Impact players received free Primogems as a result, though tensions remained high between the two fandoms after the event. Keighley noted that the whole thing reaffirmed the show's decision to not allow fully-public voting for its main categories.

On February 7th, 2023, Tighnari's English voice actor Elliot Gindi announced on Twitter that he would be taking a break from his online activity to seek therapy, claiming that the "influx of fans and fame" he gained from his work in the game "really messed [him] up". The following day, two moderators for Gindi's fan Discord servers posted to Twitter alleged evidence of offenses that Gindi had conducted in private, ranging from emotional abuse, blackmail, sexism, and having sexual relations with underage fans, with other users also coming forward to accuse Gindi of further acts. Shortly after these documents were posted, Gindi posted a Twitlonger tweet confirming that most of the allegations were true, although he denied the allegations involving underage fans. On February 16th, the game's developer HoYoverse released an official statement revealing that Gindi would no longer be voicing Tighnari, with the official reason being a "breach of contract". They also confirmed that the character would be recast at a later date, and on April 11th, they revealed he would be replaced by American actor Zachary Gordon.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is held in high regard by the development team, and is cited as one of the main inspirations for Genshin Impact.

"In a post that our team circulated to players last year, we mentioned that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was one of our inspirations for creating Genshin Impact as an open-world action RPG. That said, it is important to note that once you actually pick up the game, you will find the experience of Genshin Impact to be very different from that of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild."