PSA: Zenless Zone Zero locks you out of mobile purchases if you use PlayStation first

After a launch early this morning, Zenless Zone Zero has been the new gacha from HoYoVerse to take the reigns. It’s not without its issues, though. Aside from performance and installation issues running rampant, it’s got a pretty finicky micro-transaction system then stops you from making purchases on mobile if you have previously done so on another platform.

This was initially brought to light by a Redditor who had completed in-game purchases via PlayStation, before attempting to do the same on mobile.

Following this, I went back into Zenless Zone Zero and tested for myself, experiencing a similar roadblock after having begun the game on PlayStation first. Similarly, I made a burner account on PC and tried from there, and found that this was not the case. It seems to be a PlayStation specific issue.

It’s not clear why this is the case in-game, though it’s apparent that it’s a HoYoVerse specific quirk. In its other titles; Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, you are limited to the device that you first made the account on, just as Zenless Zone Zero does.

This will have long-term knock-on effects. What if you decide to sell you PlayStation, and now your ZZZ account is effectively bricked, alongside all of your current purchases which are now pretty worthless.

This is especially alarming considering the long life-span of Gachas such as ZZZ and Honkai. As much as I dislike this, microtransactions are a core part of the game. If you are unable to buy anything, I can’t imagine it’s going to be much fun.

It does seem an odd choice to have such an irritating pain-point in the user experience. I imagine that HoYo will lose out on cash because of this.

All we can do is inform readers to be wary of the device that they first made the account on, although it does look like HoYo has an online storefront that allows you to top-up your wallet from.

To play the devil’s advocate, if someone was to clone your account and hack you, you would be well secured against someone rinsing your bank account for all it’s worth. At least there’s that.