(see horse armor) One counterpoint is even if a vast majority of "principled" consumers abstain from cosmetics as prices increase, whales more than make up for them. There's a reason every mobile game is structured with these players in mind. Theoretically games could end up with two groups of players: a cosmetic-less ftp tier and the shiny whales. Hardly ideal for the ftp consumers who are willing to pay something, but not $250, for a skin. Existing games probably wouldn't stop producing "affordable" skin tiers--league already has plenty of cheap skins that look better than the $250 "exalted" tier which undermines the whole thing to an extent--but it could become the default for live service models in the future. Again though, would that be the fault of developers or consumers? I guess they're both to blame