I have to admit, I’m not a huge fan of the “it’s fine because it’s just cosmetics, and it doesn’t affect the game” line of reasoning.
Because that’s patently not true. If cosmetics didn’t affect the gaming experience, they wouldn’t be worth anything. Certainly not worth paying above and beyond the purchase price for.
Cosmetics are just the easiest to monetize and normalize, to the point where players will now defend full priced games for offering cosmetic microtransactions. It’s a shame. Likely a windmill-tilting cause, but a shame nonetheless.
As someone who has worked in F2P games: you're quite wrong that cosmetics are "easy to monetize". Good god, it's HARD.
Because the only way it works, at a scale that can support a studio, is if people really, really love the game. Even something that can capture attention for dozens of hours may not be good enough.
As a gamer, you're looking at something like Rocket League and going "oh yeah, it's so easy! They just make a skin and it sells!" But, uh, no. It's the 0.001% elite of all games. And they only have an "easy" time selling cosmetics in the sense that they already did the much harder work of making something amazing. Kinda like it's easy for Google to make money from ads; you need the killer product first.
They said "easiest to monetize and normalize", not "easy to monetize".
Also, your argument seems irrelevant. Making a successful anything is hard. The fact that you may make money off of a mediocre shrink wrapped clone of a clone of a clone when you hook a few suckers selling time crystals for hundreds of dollars is not an achievement, and not something that anyone should feel entitled to. And yet, it's 99.99% of the mobile "gaming" market...
Because that’s patently not true. If cosmetics didn’t affect the gaming experience, they wouldn’t be worth anything. Certainly not worth paying above and beyond the purchase price for.
Cosmetics are just the easiest to monetize and normalize, to the point where players will now defend full priced games for offering cosmetic microtransactions. It’s a shame. Likely a windmill-tilting cause, but a shame nonetheless.