GAMING & TECH

Does spending money on ‘skins’ in video games make sense?

By Khumail Thakur
27 December, 2022

Why is spending real money on virtual items tempting and how is it driving a billion-dollar industry?

Spending money on virtual items might feel unnatural for someone who doesn’t share the same sentiment as the person making the purchase. A similar emotion is perhaps invoked when you find out that someone close to you has bought a luxury product even though their bank balance doesn’t lend itself to the cause. 

According to pro gamer Ankit 'V3nom' Panth, “It [in-game purchases] gives you a feel-good factor.” Panth is now sponsored by Redbull and is also a HyperX India Brand Ambassador. A serious gamer for over a decade, he adds, “It's similar to how if you can afford a product from a luxury brand, you would go and buy it because you like it.” 

While most of us might agree with Panth, multiple factors can shape your in-game buying decisions and, consequently, shape the value of the said item and your association with it.

A pixelated story

If you don’t know what in-game skins are, here’s a crash course. Imagine a gun inside a video gameeach player has access to the same gun with the same capacity to create damage and other attributes. Now let’s assume a developer painted the gun red and sold it to you for ₹5; that red-coloured gun is now a skin. It shoots with the same accuracy but it’s just painted red. This concept for selling in-game cosmetics can apply to characters, weapons, in-game menu artworks, weapon embellishments and so on.

Developers use the ‘skins’ model to generate cash to keep the game running, updating it with fresh content.

Brands like Balmain have also teamed up with game developers to create aspirational skins.

For free-to-play games like PUBG, League of Legends and Valorant, in-game skins become a significant revenue-generating model. The game is free to play, which means the admission fee is zero. However, building a game takes time, effort and money. Developers use the ‘skins’ model to generate cash to keep the game running, updating it with fresh content. Rishi Alwani, communications manager and writer at SuperGaming, says, “India is a Battle Royale-focussed market [a multiplayer video-game genre focused on the element of survival] . By our estimates, this is a billion-dollar opportunity—weapon skins included, hence [the game] Indus.” 

In games like Fortnite that have acquired global success, it’s evident that building lore is as crucial as selling in-game skinsone never takes precedence over the other. For SuperGaming’s upcoming Battle Royale title, the entire premise is based around a single question:  ‘What if the Indus Valley Civilisation never went extinct and instead just moved to another galaxy altogether and you are discovering this 1,000 years later?’ Alwani says this helps in extracting elements from Indian arts and culture to create a fictional world and combine it with their idea of ‘Indo-futurism’. “The processwith character-building and, by extension, their outfitsis fluid here,” says Alwani.  

One of the skins called ‘Big Gaj’ is an impressive piece of design, telling the story of Indo-futurism quite aptly. Alwani, who is one of the writers of the lore for the upcoming game, says, “Big Gaj is really powerful-looking. From a story perspective, it's based on an intact piece of heavy armour left behind by the original inhabitants of the Indus Valley—the Yaksha. It incorporates several motifs of Indian culture and design in a way that's futuristic while being respectful.” 

Virtual gifts

While skins are often created to generate revenue, for developers, it helps to refrain from straying away from the core aspect of the game’s visual sensibilities as it makes the player feel more connected with the game. There are, however, more reasons why a developer might choose to sell skins and plenty more reasons why you would want one. 

“PEOPLE LIKE WATCHING VIDEOS OF OTHERS BUYING BUNDLES AND SKINS IN-GAME AND HOSTING GIVEAWAYS FOR THEIR COMMUNITIES. PLUS, THEY’RE REALLY FUN TO PLAY WITH!”
Ankkita Chauhan

Fashion powerhouse Versace also entered the world of video games earlier this year. 

For Panth, it is something which supports the game he plays. Players are willing to support the development team by purchasing in-game cosmetic items so as to encourage them to build more content around the game. Although Panth says he hasn’t yet spent money buying in-game skins, he adds, “My fans can gift me skins on my stream if they’d like to, otherwise I just play with the default ones.” 

Just like tangible gifts, virtual ones, too, hold special value to a person. For instance, free-to-play games like Valorant and Call of Duty: Warzone saw massive spikes in player activity during the COVID-19 lockdowns. People ended up making friends online, many of whom they haven’t yet met in person but heard their voices every day. Since a lot of time was spent shooting games like Valorant, gifting a weapon skin became an obvious choice amongst those in the gaming community. 

Shut up and take my money

“The most I’ve spent has to be between CS:GO and Valorant. I spent almost ₹60,000 on CS:GO skins and another ₹60,000 on Valorant,” says Mihir ‘Phzd’ Gupte. Surprisingly, Gupte hasn’t even started earning yet and he’s not investing in skins to be a streamer or a professional gamer either. He’s a college-going student who happens to love video games. For most games, players are shelling out money to buy in-game skins simply for personal reasons. “I buy skins because of the placebo effect it offers. Everything feels different when I'm using a weapon skin. It feels like a whole different weapon and obviously there is the vanity that comes along with it, especially with Valorant—the skins in that game are beautiful.” he says.

Game developers don’t make it easy to resist the temptation either. The battle pass system is the easiest way to get hooked. A relatively small sum of money lets you purchase an experience-based progression ticket that gradually unlocks cosmetic content the more you play for a certain amount of time. “I think they’re good for content. People like watching videos of others buying bundles and skins in-game and hosting giveaways for their communities. Plus, they’re really fun to play with!” says Ankkita Chauhan, a popular streamer with 355K subscribers on YouTube.

The best skins are almost always sold separately or within a themed bundle. Games like Fortnite are filled with skins from various sources from across the gaming world such as Star Wars, anime, WWE superstars, comic book heroes, movie stars and characters from other games. Heck, there’s even Ariana Grande in Fortnite! These premium collections and skins cost a lot more than the usual ones because of licensing fees.  Games as popular as Fortnite become a melting pot for advertisers to dip their toes into the virtual space and seek the attention (and, hopefully, wallets) of individuals who spend more time staring and yelling at a screen than at the checkout counter of boutique stores. 

Gaming is a luxury

In 2021, Samsung collaborated with Fortnite wherein the owners of Samsung Galaxy Note 9 smartphones were given a free skin. This meant the only way to get that particular skin was to buy the Samsung phone in question. Funnily enough, some clever gamers managed to get the skin from Samsung’s demo pieces at their stores. The process to get the skin was to install the game on Note 9 and log in with one’s Fortnite ID. 

Samsung, however, isn’t the only company trying new marketing tactics like this one. The iconic racing game franchise Need for Speed is out with a new title called ‘Need for Speed Unbound,’ where you can buy clothes for your in-game avatar. For instance, EA has added a jacket from Balmain, an overcoat from Versace, some shoes and T-shirts from Puma, FILA and more into the clothing catalogue. These are purchasable with in-game currency which can be earned by winning races. However, you don’t need to spend real money to get these in-game, and so a collaboration with swanky juggernauts like Versace and Balmain is purely for marketing. 

There are even more places where brands start to plug their logos for the gaming community to take notice. “I’ve seen a few [brands] partnering with gaming organisations for merch,” says Chauhan. What she is referring to is the massive endorsement and partnerships that many non-gaming brands try to do with popular eSports teams. T1, an international eSports team, is sponsored by Nike and BMW.

So are skins valuable assets in video games? It depends on the user’s definition of an asset. Do you want to invest in the best and the rarest skins in a competitive video game and then sell the account to someone who wants that particular skin but cannot have it because it was a limited run? Yes, that’s possible. Gamers sell accounts of free-to-play video games when they amass a large number of premium skins. For example, CS:GO has a gun skins market that runs on factors like rarity and pattern, with prices going as upwards as a lakh for a single gun skin. Or a skin can purely be an investment for streamers/pro gamers who want their viewers to understand the look and feel of owning a particular skin before they can make a purchasing decision. 

Lastly, it can be personal. At that point, it may not be an asset but it might very well be for bragging rights, and it is a known fact that competitive gamers love to brag.