Genshin Impact drops actor who admitted to sexual misconduct and pledges to scrub him from the game entirely
Elliot Gindi confessed to "wrong and inappropriate" behaviour in a statement last week.
HoYoverse has announced that it's dropping Elliot Gindi from Genshin Impact's voice cast for "breach of contract," after the actor admitted to sexual misconduct with fans on Discord last week. Gindi, who provided the English voice for Genshin's Tighnari, will "no longer be voicing the character in subsequent versions" of the game, after he confessed to "wrong and inappropriate" behaviour in a statement released last week, though he denied preying on underage members of his Discord community.
Tighnari will be voiced by a new actor going forward, although HoYoverse hasn't figured out who yet. The studio says it's "communicating with the voice recording agency regarding matters of casting" for the moment. The studio aims to eventually scrub Gindi's voice from the game entirely, saying that it will "gradually replace Tighnari's existing in-game voice lines, and issue these updates in the corresponding announcements".
Dear Travelers,After communications with the voice recording agency, we hereby confirm that Elliot Gindi, the English voice actor for Tighnari will no longer be voicing the character in subsequent versions due to a breach of contract.February 16, 2023
The allegations against Gindi surfaced in a Google Doc that circulated early last week, which contained screenshots of sexually explicit messages between the actor and users in his Discord community. It was backed up by former moderators of that community, FretCore and phiotan. FretCore accused Gindi of being a "groomer" who "has sexual relations with teen fans," while phiotan shared direct messages with Gindi in which the actor claimed to have had "personal relationships with three of the girls in the server".
The news of Gindi's dismissal from his role in Genshin has been greeted positively by fans. The replies to the tweets announcing the change consist mostly of thank yous and expressions of relief. The reaction on Genshin Impact's Reddit community was much the same, with users praising HoYoverse for a speedy reaction to the controversy.
"Considering how long these kinds of things typically take, this is relatively quick," said a much-upvoted comment from a user named rayhaku808, while another from Chaotickane remarked "Guy is a monster, glad he was caught early and destroyed his career now instead of catching it years after the fact".
It's not yet clear when Gindi's replacement will be found or when his voice will start disappearing from the game, but I'd imagine it'll be pretty quick. Removing the actor from Genshin seems like it's quickly become one of the studio's priorities, so I'd be surprised if HoYoverse didn't have more news for fans soon.