My Thoughts on Cosmetic Shops in non F2P games

These days, cosmetic shops in our video games is kinda common. Generally, a game will have some sort of shop where you can buy items for real world money, or some currency you buy with real money. And there’s often a season pass as well, that gives you cosmetics too. However, are these cosmetic shops a good thing or a bad thing?

In multiplayer games, cosmetics can go a long way

After all, everyone wants to look unique. Allowing people to customize their characters and all that is big business, and people are also willing to spend money to look more unique. Sure, not everyone will buy cosmetics, but there is certainly a market in any multiplayer game. There are also often extra incentives to buying from a cosmetic store simply because the paid-for stuff is generally bigger and fancier than what you’d find in a game for free.

Why cosmetics though? Well, once a game is released, it still needs a form of income, because you can’t always rely on more and more people buying a game. Especially after that initial release rush has died down. A F2P game needs to have revenue avenues right from the start of a game’s existence, but so does anything that deals in multiplayer gaming.

Cosmetics and accessories are an easy way to get that extra money since people are fussy about looks. Generally there’s an in-game currency which is paid for with real money, and that is the only way to get items. Some games (like Sea of Thieves or Warframe), allow internal ways to get premium currencies, but those aren’t always the case.

Pointless in single player games

In a single player game, having a shop or anything is quite weird. I mean, the desire to customize your character is always still there (depending on the game of course) but there’s zero reason to actually spend money in doing so. The whole idea of real-money cosmetics in a single player game baffles me greatly, to the point of utter confusion.

And then you have games that really muddy the water. The latest version of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim comes with several mods and QOL bits and pieces. Really, Skyrim is a real mess because you can have both paid-for mods and powerful mods made by the modding community. Really though, Skyrim is a whole separate article.

Another way for a game to stay afloat.

Thing is, these companies do kinda need the money. After all, many multiplayer games require constant maintenance, and their servers have to run 24/7 so that everyone can play. Even with games that use peer-to-peer for their servers still need actual servers for everything from accounts to items to, well, cosmetics. The servers and the databases on them need to be kept up to date for a multiplayer game to keep on running.

At the end of the day, I think I’ve become numb to cosmetic shops. As long as they remain “pay to look good” rather than “pay to win”, then I don’t really care that much. Let people buy and wear stupid cosmetics, let people enjoy themselves. Don’t let people gamble though, that’s not the same as a cosmetic shop.

If it’s helping with keeping servers alive, I’d much prefer living with cosmetic horrors than not have a game at all.