The Sickening Truth Behind Cosmetic Gaming Microtransactions
5. Won't Somebody Think Of The Children? (Seriously)
As easy as it is to view cosmetics as harmless digital objects, it's important to consider them through the lens of children playing games like Fortnite and Overwatch.
Effectively, these skins create a new digital facsimile of the real-world "haves and have-nots," where the rich kids have all the fancy new clothes, and the poorer kids don't - and are typically bullied for it.
With our children's formative years now filtered through the lens of social media, there's a massive, added layer of social pressure, and one which these games knowingly take full advantage of in order to peddle their wares to audiences too young to know better.
While it's tough to imagine many kids being bullied for not throwing money into pay-to-win mechanics, it's far easier to imagine them being teased, and their self-esteem being eroded, all because they don't have the hot new Fortnite outfit.
Isn't growing up difficult enough without a game rubbing it in your face? The fact that games clearly marketed with kids in mind are able to so brazenly lure in young customers without much in the way of oversight - something we'll get back to later - is absolutely vile.
Yet beyond concerns for the mental well-being of the coming generations, there is one basic, undisputed truth about cosmetic MTX...