Ethical Monetization: The "Cosmetic-Only" Economy
- Dennis Wan
- Jun 20
- 2 min read
Back in 2017, Electronic Arts (EA) published Star Wars Battlefront II. Very quickly, it was met by immense backlash from players about how “Pay-to-Win" it was. Loot boxes, paid progression, paid character unlocks - all this in a title that players already had to pay US$60 for.
Not surprisingly, many gamers hate "Pay-to-Win" (P2W); even more so if they already had to pay upfront for the title. If a player can just buy a stronger sword and dominate the server, your game will die. The industry's most successful competitive games have shifted to a much more ethical, and highly profitable, model: Cosmetic-Only Economies.
In games like League of Legends or Valorant, you cannot buy power. But you can buy "Radiant" weapon skins with custom reload animations and kill effects. This "Cosmetic-Only" spending allows developers to generate (hopefully) massive revenue without ever compromising the competitive balance of the game.
In Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and Arena of Valor, there are paid skins that grant minor stat bonuses. However, these bonuses are small enough to be considered merely psychological, attracting mainly the hardcore min-maxxer players.
Players are happy to pay for self-expression and status when they know the playing field is level. In fact, some games have managed to be hugely financially successful from purely monetising cosmetics. In Counter-Strike 2 (CS2), weapon skins are a billion-dollar economy, with players holding what they term as an “investment portfolio” of weapon skins. Other than the official marketplace, many third-party marketplaces have sprung up around the weapon economy as well. If you’ve been following the news on this, Valve later on implemented a change in the mechanics that, not just increased accessibility to rare weapon skins, AND also increased their revenue. Everyone wins - except for those players who were holding on to million-dollar skins. Definitely an article for another time.
There may be times when personalisation can backfire as well: Ubisoft introduced their Quartz NFT platform, but was met with negative reception from fans. NFT cosmetics were significantly more expensive than normal ones, and did not have any other utility. Arguably, web3 technology is still finding its feet in games, this is yet a topic that deserves a separate deep dive.
How do you monetise your game ethically without alienating your player base? You may find the answer in one of the articles in this series, so be sure to check out the rest!
If this has been useful to you, and you'd like to find out more, reach out to Dennis Wan at www.copiaventura.com !
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