I said the situation is crazy, not a specific person. I dont blame any individual, the strategies used over the years by these companies to sell skins and make consumers complacent are all very manipulative and effective. The people designing the systems and the ones doing the marketing have done a very, very good job.

Maybe you should've been clearer on what you meant considering your passive aggressive tone towards the consumer like "consumers keep sucking it up" (I don't think this one need explaining) or calling them complacent (indirectly criticizing people for being too passive or indifferent) or saying we forgot cosmetics used to be free (implies we used to know better and now don't).

You seem stuck on artists all being freelance, getting paid on some sort of commission. They are almost always salaried employees like anyone else at the development company.

First of all, whether they're freelance or not shouldn't matter to you considering you're claiming they shouldn't get paid either. And secondly I don't think you understand how companies operate. People at companies work to generate revenue. Free cosmetics do not generate revenue and if they're packaged with the game their contribution to the pricing is marginal thus the labor cost of making these assets would be disproportionate to their value and they don't get made. The artists will get paid by they won't be working of cosmetics. For artists to work on cosmetics there needs to be an incentive to work on them.

Weird analogy, paying for a game, something usually worked on for years, is a lot different than paying for a cosmetic change to something. It's like going to the movies and paying the price of the ticket again to sit in a green chair instead of a red one and being told that's completely normal and something you should do.

Is it? Last time I checked money goes off my account and I get something that costs no extra for the company (outside of making the thing).

Or are you drawing the difference at the amount of time it takes to make something? So a game made within a month should be free? A cosmetic that for some reasons took years to make should be paid? Or is it a matter of respect? That you respect game devs and their labor but you don't respect artists and their labor?

As for your cinema analogy, some cinemas have higher quality chairs in the same theater and as a matter of fact, you do pay extra for them.

I agree, if skins were sold for $0.50, $1.00, max $5, then I would have less issue with them.

Are we starting to move the goal post here? Cosmetics costing less shouldn't matter to you at all because your issue is that you have pay ANY amount for them.

I'd still have issue with the predatory practices used to sell them though. Some people are more susceptible to this than others, so I would rather it didnt exist at all.

Which is a completely different issue. I also have issues with predatory practices but the existence of predatory practices doesn't mean cosmetics should be free.

You buy a game once, have all the content and are not pressured again to spend anything, that's the ideal scenario, why would I compromise on that?

And if the game releases a DLC with new content are you not pressured to buy the DLC? Are you going to argue that DLC should also be free or are you going to draw another arbitrary line in the sand stating that game devs deserve the money but artists don't?

Games should be a sustainable art form, not gross corporate projects to extract as much money as possible from consumers.

And how exactly is something sustainable when you give it away for free?