Well… No. Those cosmetics are part of the game. You should be able to unlock them through gameplay.

In a perfect world, things like FOMO and group pressure would not exist. People would understand that skins are just useless pixels. We do not live in that world. Yes there are a handful of people who are not affected by the psychological effects of this and if you are one of them lucky you. The truth is, most people are affected, most people feel bad to be the only one with no knife skin, with default armor ( “Default” being an insult in online games with a very young audience) and most people do love the “look” and feel a real need to buy cosmetics.

There is a reason game developers hire psychologists. That’s why all lootboxes have sparkles and sound effects and even look like slot machines although what is in your box is long decided. It is because it works for most people’s brains as stimulating. That’s why some people make a living out of videos where they open loot boxes because even watching someone else open them makes our brain chemistry go WROOOOOM.

It is way less of a choice for most people than you think it is. I remember one FPS game has a quest where you need to open a loot box ingame and others can watch you do it, to animate them to buy loot boxes. These businesses have no shame to invent constantly new ways of making you enter the shop. Like making food rot ingame so you will have to buy a fridge from the shop (Fallout 76).

MTX and loot boxes are part of the core of many games. When they finally got rid of loot boxes in Mordor: Shadow of War , they had to redo the whole economy of the game, because it was to the core made in a way to encourage you to buy war chests for better Orcs.

You CAN live without ever eating cake, but if everyone eats cake, all other food looks bland and boring and you constatnly are shown ads for cake, shiny cake, tasty cake, colorful cake, cake that you can only buy until <date> and cake that only 100 people can buy and all your friends are having cake right now and telling you how good it is… there is a point where it doesn’t matter that the cake is a lie scam, you will want cake too.

You don’t pay people because it’s the only motivator. You pay people because you need money to survive in this world. If we don’t, then the only people who can afford to spend time making mods are those who are already have their basic needs taken care of through other means.

I would like to see a world where anyone with the passion for modding can make mods.

So is all art, should artists all work for free? Why do I have to pay for books and movies? Aren’t the authors motivated by passion? Isn’t your argument the same one used by corporations underpaying game devs all the time, “since they should be happy fulfilling their passion”?

the capitalistic idea that only money can motivate people to do things sucks.

Agree, and I wish we lived in an utopia where nobody needs money and everyone can share their work freely. Sadly, this is not the world we live in, and so we need to reward passionate people to let them dedicate time to their passion rather than having to only focus on work for survival. That way not only rich people can afford to make mods.