Key Takeaways
- Paid cosmetics offer no benefit to gameplay, making them a hard sell for many gamers.
- Other players typically don’t care about your premium cosmetics, which are often used as a social status signal.
- Paid cosmetics may use dubious business practices like artificial scarcity.
Game developers need to make money in exchange for the work they do, and usually I’m happy to give it to them! However, when it comes to paid cosmetics in games, that’s a line I just won’t cross.
No Benefit to Gameplay
I understand that video games are something that we not only play, but also spend time looking at. I want my character to look cool, and I certainly want a game to have sweet cosmetic outfits, but if I’m being asked to pay extra for them just for a cosmetic change, that’s a hard pill to swallow.
I might go as far as saying that single-player games with cosmetic DLC almost make more sense, since you’re really only doing it for your own enjoyment. However, for multiplayer games like Diablo IV where there’s such a clear artificial money grab with cosmetics that have zero gameplay benefits, my credit card becomes harder to lift then Mjolnir. I much prefer how Helldivers 2 does things. Any cosmetic item in the game can be earned using regular gameplay, and a reasonable amount of it at that!
Other Players Don’t Actually Care
Premium cosmetics are often a social signal. Like wearing an expensive watch, or driving a fancy car. Those sorts of social class signals carry over into the virtual world as well, and game developers count on this human social instinct to motivate people to buy cosmetics. Particularly cosmeticsthat are tied to a specific time, and are therefore rare.
The thing is, while you may feel great lording around in your shiny duds (and that’s not worth nothing, to be fair), other players don’t actually care. In fact, you’re more likely to get a negative reaction than any sort of positive treatment. Whether from envy or plain disdain, you might catch a little more griefing and trolling, compared to wearing or displaying items that were earned through gameplay feats.
Skins Often Have Scummy Business Practices
I mentioned that cosmetics in games are often sold using artificial scarcity, but this is just one of the potentially scummy psychological tricks developers and publishers use. I particularly dislike it when a game has paid cosmetics at launch, since this suggests that they purposely took the most appealing in-game cosmetics, and then separated them out to make more money on top of the asking price for the game.
In fact, it’s the very principle that publishers are deliberately making skins and other cosmetics that are less appealing to give away for free, to make their paid skins look better that really rubs me the wrong way sometimes.
They’re No Better Than NFTs
In some sense, paid cosmetics are like NFTs, except in most cases, you can’t sell them for a profit. Of course, many popular online games that use a loot box system to award cosmetics have also spawned underground skin markets, so that someone lucky enough to pull out a rare skin can end up selling it for thousands of dollars. Thus elevating paid skins in games into the realm of gambling, where players may blow hundreds of dollars on skin loot boxes in the vain hope of winning big.
You Can Look Cool Without Spending Anything
The truth is that paid cosmetics tend to be garish, and you’ll probably end up getting tired of them pretty quickly. While it does differ from game to game, it’s usually far better to use standard gear and free cosmetic items to craft an overall look that isn’t some gold and silver nightmare with RGB lighting thrown into the mix. Some games offer more cosmetic options as you play, unlocking virtual dyes or letting you mix and match different pieces of gear to make something unique.
Tasteful and unique is always the way to go, in my opinion, but if you do want to look like the digital equivalent of a bejeweled smartphone, then by all means, enjoy your gaming in any way you like.
