For decades, gaming was built around the single purchase of a game that you played for a couple of years until a new one was released.
That model quickly became unsustainable as the cost of developing AAA titles rose into the hundreds of millions. This became a bigger issue with games like Fortnite and other battle royales because they also need large populations of players on at any given time or the game will die. Because a hefty upfront price tag might kill the game altogether, options were limited.
Enter the era of in-game cosmetics. This model operates a lot like a freemium model by which games like Fortnite will allow anyone to download the play the game for free, but in-game cosmetics, like character or gun skins, cost money. Because many players will often spend $10 or $20, and others will spend hundreds of dollars over the years, it ends up often being more profitable than a single upfront purchase.
Despite being a relatively new shift in the gaming world, it’s quickly becoming the standard across the gaming industry, with the gaming cosmetics market size estimated to be at $50 billion. With this, gaming marketplaces to buy and sell these skins have become big business.
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