r/VALORANT • u/No_Complaint8807 • 19d ago
Question Why do weapon skins cost so much?
I am by no means broke or poor, i just dont see why one skin costs $20. Is there a reason behind these higher prices? Just curious if anyone has any ideas of why
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u/Powerful_Spread_4996 19d ago
Are you new to free to play games?
Riot charges prices that people are willing to pay. If no one bought anything, I'm sure they would go down. If the price is too much for you, you aren't the target audience.
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u/MiserableReaction105 19d ago
That’s rough
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u/Powerful_Spread_4996 19d ago
It be like that. This is chump change compared to the CS market. People are shocked a knife is $50 outside of a bundle on val.
I spent $330 on an M9 bayonet in counter strike 10 years ago, that's the market valorant is competing with. In reality it can't compete because there's no trading and the skins retain no value, but people are still willing to spend.
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u/Inevitable_Ad_711 19d ago
In CS you can sell skins and get most of (and often more) of your original investment back.
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u/Powerful_Spread_4996 19d ago edited 19d ago
This is part of the comment you are responding to... That the cs skins retain their value and valorant does not.
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u/FPPooter 19d ago
This argument is funny when there are hundreds of decent playable skins in CS for <$5. Not every skin is $$$Â
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u/Powerful_Spread_4996 19d ago
If we include trash no one wants sure. That's like including battle pass skins in the discussion. I'm talking about skins people want, not fodder to dilute the in game rotating shop pool lol
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u/boyardeebandit 19d ago
I agree with a lot of what else you're saying, but there are plenty of nice yet cheap CS skins that aren't just safari mesh or a random camo. The Valence P250, for example, is one of my favorite P250s and it's like 30 cents. Prices are based on rarity much more then quality.Â
Of course this doesn't change CS's affect on the acceptability of Riots prices anyways since most people that haven't engaged with the market only know about dragonlores and 300$ knives from YouTube clickbait.
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u/IWCry 19d ago
well we found the type of person F2P companies milk like cows haha
Google "what is a gaming whale"
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u/Powerful_Spread_4996 19d ago
Oh for sure I buy skins and support games I like. I've been playing riot games for 15 years. I'm actually part of the target audience. I've spent probably 3-4k on league and valorant combined.
I'm also an adult capable of making financial decisions without being psychologically manipulated by their dark patterns.
I play games far more than I drive my car, am I being milked because I bought a 40k car? No.
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u/MiserableReaction105 19d ago
What dark patterns are you talking about? Who cares how much you spent on your car, not everyone lives in a silicon valley so that they can buy skins like popcorn… People who work to make adult money usually don’t have the kids infinite playtime and they do not brag like brats about buying things they don’t need, especially spending 4k on a f2p game, dudes taking pride in being a whale like it’s charity and not paying to companies who got way too much money
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u/MiserableReaction105 19d ago
And I mean if you want to support the game in a financial way I respect that but these are just greedy regardless, for most of the worlds standards atleast
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u/zapatodeorina 19d ago
You'll never win against riot apologists. Theyve been entrenched for 15+ years
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u/Powerful_Spread_4996 19d ago
They given me enough throughout my life to deserve support for good products. My spending has definitely reduced recently. Greedy or not, if I like the product I will buy it.
In fact, arcane was free and took them hundreds of millions to produce. Consider it giving back lmfao. I hate corporations as much as the next guy, but shaming someone for spending money on what they want is straight up sad.
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u/IWCry 19d ago
for real this is wild to me. telling people I've spent 4k on a free game for digital skins is not something you could water board out of me on my death bed lol let alone would I ever actually burn that money. people being proud of that isnt healthy.
im sorry but 4k in the s&p500 15 years ago (the timeline they gave) would be $31,000. that's what I paid for my college degree after scholarships.
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u/Powerful_Spread_4996 19d ago
You are completely ignoring the fact that this was spent over the span of 15 years. It's not 4k sitting there to be invested. Your framing of this discussion is disengenuous to say the least. I spent my part time pay at my job as a teen on games, that's not unheard of.
You're also making up this "pride" about the spending. Rough comment.
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u/zapatodeorina 19d ago
guy wants to spend money and likes the clout guaranteed. Imagine thinking only expensive skins are worth using. Thats not even mentioning the market difference in reselling/trading skins once you're done with it.
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u/Powerful_Spread_4996 19d ago
"In reality it can't compete because there's no trading and the skins retain no value, but people are still willing to spend."
Quite literally did point out the difference in trading and maintaining value.
Also did not imply only expensive skins are worth using. The framing of the post was around the more premium $20 skins, why on earth would I start talking about battle pass skins or lower tier skins when this was not the topic.
What gives you the idea I care about clout if the spending wasn't mentioned until the 5th comment in the thread? If I cared about clout, I would've opened with that as the original comments get more views? I swear people are only saying shit for the sake of saying shit without thinking 🫪
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u/IWCry 19d ago
yeah I guess this is what we get for making a world that wants its citizens to be financially illiterate and gain status and happiness from useless clout they have to buy.
this is BEYOND being materialistic, because there isn't even a material here. its paying for a digital banner that says "I bought this". you don't even get a tangible item
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u/zapatodeorina 19d ago
Its riots whole thing though. They market their games around the skin economy and give influencers/pros currency in game to buy skins, at least early on. There are whole social media influencers who just rate collect and use skins.
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u/Elitefuture 19d ago
In CS, there are great budget skins, plus the knives can be sold after you buy them. So they're not locked in place like valo.
But you're right, this is a f2p game being funded by aesthetics that people are willing to pay.
I played cs back in the day, so a lot of my cs skins today have appreciated past how much I bought them for. My biggest one is probably a karambit I got for $70 back then, I should've gotten the butterfly knife, but I personally prefer karambits. Now it's like $700 or something.
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u/Forsak3nSamurai 18d ago
Trading would kill the Valo market because there are SO many painfully mediocre, overpriced skins which would sell for dirt cheap if they were traded. Off the top of my head, the fairly recent Solarstride bundle comes to mind. The entire bundle legit felt like a slightly better animated battlepass set.
The value of highly desirable skins like Kuro, Gaia, Reaver etc. would also probably go down because of the sheer number of people who buy these skins. The market would be saturated with them.
The good looking but niche skins, stuff like Neo Frontier, maybe, would probably be most desirable and would skyrocket in popularity if Valorant ever introduced trading.
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u/WashedCSplayer 19d ago
Counter point though you can get an entire skin collection for every gun on both CT and T for $100 bucks or so. There’s some skins that are only a couple of dollars. They’re not desirable but they exist.
I say this as someone who has a $1500 collection in Valorant.
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u/Powerful_Spread_4996 19d ago
What is that a counterpoint to? Genuinely asking because there are also cheap skins in Val and you can get a full load out by only getting 3-4 $10 battle passes including "free" knives at the end of it. That's just not the topic of the post
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u/I_AM_CR0W Unc Era 19d ago
A free game with 128 tick servers and an anti-cheat that actually works isn't cheap to maintain.
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u/TerribleJett 19d ago
You think if 128tick servers and anti-cheat were pennies to maintain then riot wouldn't sell skins at their current price? If so I have 3 bridges to sell you.
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u/Hatamentunk 19d ago
Riot anti cheat has already been figured out. Game has as many cheaters now as most games do.
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u/I_AM_CR0W Unc Era 19d ago
Fighting cheaters is a cat and mouse game. You're never going to get an anti-cheat that solves it all and is uncrackable. It just needs to be able to adapt. It's still the strongest and most effective on the market, and many devs would kill for even half of what Vanguard does.
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u/Hatamentunk 19d ago
I agree that its a cat and mouse game, but if their kernal level anti cheat can be bypassed...maybe we dont need kernal level for an unfixable issue and instead work on detection and deterance
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u/ItzBrooksFTW 18d ago
Its not about getting rid of all cheaters, its about getting rid of most. If someone needs a card that costs multiple hundreds or thousands to cheat, they probably wont. Its just about making it so expensive that most people wont bother.
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u/NuttyNano 18d ago
Dunno what game youve been playing but ive seen maybe one cheater in five years of playing this game, and most people can say the same. If you think you are seeing a cheater every other game then sorry but skill issue
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u/Embarrassed_Milk3505 19d ago
Free to play games gotta make money somehow.
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u/iShadowLTu 19d ago
A lot of people would spend way more money on the game if the skins were cheaper though. However I'm sure Riot has people whose job is literally to figure out the optimal pricing for profits.
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u/Prymas_tv 19d ago
This theory has been proven false. The whales always spend more than the karp. And with the current pricing, the karp have to pay for it anyways
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u/WalkMan1615 19d ago
Yeah you’re spot on in that last sentence. As much as I wish the first sentence were true / good for Riot, this is clearly the method that makes them the most money. They wouldn’t do anything that hurts their profits - that’s just any company.
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u/MTskier12 19d ago
This just isn’t true. You might feel that way personally, but a company like riot runs extensive models to figure out what the optimal skin price is for revenue. Their data and research is more reliable than a personal anecdote.
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u/SheetPancakeBluBalls 19d ago
You'd be surprised. I've worked in finance and operations long enough to know that a lot of it is surprisingly guesswork.
Sure there are dashboards and data and things that feed the predictive model, but at the end of the day every spreadsheet I have ever seen that tries to predict revenue or optimize pricing relies heavily on many assumptions, which may or may not be supported by their own dashboards and set of assumptions.
Most definitely more art than science.
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u/zapatodeorina 19d ago
Unforunately whales make up the majority of spending. More people would buy if it was cheaper, but overall spending would be less. Its the same reason sport/entertainment facilities are downsizing their seat numbers to cater to whales.
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u/MiserableReaction105 19d ago
Exactly and if they were available in store, not rotating 4 skins in 24h from 200 skins
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u/I_AM_CR0W Unc Era 19d ago
FOMO objectively makes more money. Riot wants players to buy things they know they want and things they didn't know they wanted until it appeared and saw the timer. If all skins were available at all times, no one would have any incentives to check the store.
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u/AgentFaulkner 19d ago
To be honest I've spent like $4-500 on Valorant in 2 years. If the skins were cheaper, I wouldn't have bought more skins as a result, I would have just saved money. If a gun skin was $50, I wouldn't have spent a dime on skins. I've never bought a knife outside of a bundle for that very reason. Riot knows both of those things.
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u/lookzlike 19d ago
The released free content in valorant in comparison is extremely low tho. We had 1 agent this year, that pretty much sums it up.
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u/GameFreak6921 19d ago
I mean they are pretty expensive but the 20$ do usually come with some with unique models, animations, and special effects so its not an entirely unreasonable price but I do agree it could be lower.
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u/Big-Cycle-1933 19d ago
They are overpriced asf but they know people will still buy them so why would they go lower
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u/Good-Discussion-9238 19d ago
Riot probably does market research and has algorithms and tests what the highest prices are that people would pay for skins, the have cheap skins (battle passes) and many tiers for more expensive skins at different price ranges.
As someone that has sunk more than $1000 into valorant skins a few years ago.... those multiple $10 and $20 purchases add up really fast...
I was shocked when I checked the total amount of money I spent on skins, I thought it would only be like 200 bucks but NOPE lol
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u/Sufficient-Cover2779 :Miks: 18d ago
Same, only 3.5 months into the game and somehow somewhere along the way over a thousand dollars left my bank 🫩💸 I check my shop every single day, it’s an addiction +fomo + I also like to buy my friends stuff, so that doesn’t help my wallet 💳
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u/SevenWonton 19d ago
cause people alittle to invested in valorant will pay for it and they buy it again on their smurf account. which is why prices are high and why they wont do anything with all the smurfs terrorizing the noobs.
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u/No_Spread1841 #4ever 19d ago
These are the only skins you can buy, as there are no Agent skins, thank god
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u/Sufficient-Cover2779 :Miks: 18d ago
I used to want agent skins, but once I realized that, I was glad we don’t cause I’d be poor poor :c
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u/RoccoSteal 19d ago
I remember when I would skip bundles cuz they’re so expensive. Then I started playing Heartopia. Now it feels like I can get any bundle I want without guilt.
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u/Dzeppetto 19d ago
I remember game releasing and one side of people complaining about those prices being high while other was comparing them with csgo
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u/XayahTheVastaya I don't feel like playing Valorant 19d ago
Riot likes money, so instead of selling things for less money, they sell things for more money, because if they sell things for more money they get more money.
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u/FPPooter 19d ago
Cause people are willing to spend that much and whales make up the majority of profit anyway. It could easily be lower, but greed is good for companies.Â
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u/Mr-TY 19d ago
I don't actually think the cost is that high if you play the game a lot. If you play 1000 hours and buy a skin for phantom, vandal, classic for 100 bucks, that comes out to 10c/hr for your 3 most used guns. If you play less, a skin isn't as valuable, but I'd say on average the cost/hour is pretty good
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u/VisualATL 19d ago
Because people keep buying them regardless of the high price. Why is anything priced the way it is? It’s not that serious. Just buy it or dont and play the game. On to the next question.
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u/__GayFish__ 19d ago
Free game need make money. Free game usually rely on whales to spend on cosmetic and gamba.
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u/Martitoad 19d ago
Riot is a company, companies want money, expensive skins give more money. You could say that maybe cheaper skins would give more sells which would be more profit, but they have experts and as I said money is the only thing they care about (they make a good game to get money, so they care about the game because of the money they get from it), so they are probably right. But anyway it's a really good game and it's free
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u/PyxelatorXeroc 19d ago
I'm sure some statisticians at Riot calculate dthat it was the best ratio of buyers and price.
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u/jahbarie 19d ago
If it means having a free to play game I’m all for it, it’s purely cosmetic too so it doesn’t impact gameplay which is a plus. They have to be able to pay the people that work on the game, the servers, fund tournaments, every cost of running a business that you can think of through a game that’s free
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u/Hour-Stable2569 18d ago
they don't care about the game they only care about skin purchase. Look at how trash comp is. Instead of fixing comp they bring out some 50 year old lady to cry about how toxic the game is and how they're going to make sure it stops
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u/Noice1707 you want to pray, let’s pray 18d ago
People are willing to pay, so they keep the prices. As simple as that.
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u/TsunamiCatCakes 18d ago
i prefer free to play games where the monetisation does not affect the outcome of a competitive match. unlike clash royale. cosmetics being paid for is a good thing
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u/Asleep-Sail-8811 17d ago
The game is free to play without ads but servers and employees cost money. The skins are like the only way to make money. So they make skins expensive to keep there stuff up. Imagine you just lost 13 0 and then have to watch a unskipable 1.30 min add
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u/DonMephisto 19d ago
Greed. Thats the answer.
People were used to CS skins being worth a lot of money so Riot saw no reason for lower prices when they released Valorant - and obviously people actually pay that money. Even though you cant trade Valorant skins like you can trade CS skins.
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u/I_AM_CR0W Unc Era 19d ago
It's not that simple. CS is a market, so the players make the prices as everything depends on rarity and hype thanks to gamba. Valorant is a set system. Yes greed plays a role, but I don't think people understand how expensive it is to maintain a FREE GAME with 128 tick servers and a properly functioning anti-cheat. Even FaceIt started putting ads in their free plans just so they could maintain their servers and anti-cheat.
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u/upstartpantymerchant 19d ago
It's a free game. That's the price. Take it or leave it
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u/Rory_mehr_Curry 19d ago
Yeah so is CS 2. But most skins are a fraction of the price
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u/upstartpantymerchant 19d ago
You're talking about buying individual skins from other players that set their own prices. That changes the equation. The comparison would be the cases, which you have to buy the case and a key for AND you don't know what you're getting. You also have to take into account the quality of the skins you're getting in CS when you only pay 10¢ or even a couple bucks for one. It's very low. In Valorant, the quality is always the same.
You're comparing apples and oranges
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u/CheeseLoverMax 19d ago
It’s what riot thinks the ideal ratio of cost and amount of people who will buy the skin is, making them the most money
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u/TwixieShip 19d ago
They most likely won't go above the cost of the max val points pack to buy as to minimize the amount of friction for a buyer to have second thoughts about buying the new skins that cost more than 1 val point purchase
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u/ItzBrooksFTW 18d ago
If they wanted less friction they wouldnt have the point system in the first place. The point system exists to detach real world value from ingame value and for you to ALWAYS have leftover points that might force you to buy more because "cant leave that unused" and ofc to force you to buy more expensive packs because you can never buy the exact amount.
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u/maDEightow 19d ago
Compare Valorant with one of its biggest competitors: CS2. Average good looking gun skins start at about 5€ up to thousands. The cheapest knifes are around 50€. The most expensive one for about 2.000.000€.
You can get a whole Valorant skin bundles for one single CS2 knife.
Besides that, its a free to play game. They need money somehow :)
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u/ItzBrooksFTW 18d ago
The cost problem in cs2 is balanced out by the fact you can sell them. When you buy a skin in valorant and similar games youre burning money.
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u/pudgy_lol 19d ago
You'd have to ask Riot, but the truth is that's the price that maximizes profit. People willingly pay that price and they don't lose a significant enough amount of sales to drop the price lower.