Why are skins SO expensive?

Chickenlitte·2/25/2015, 10:20:31 PM·5 votes·1,471 views

For example, that new skin when it's on sale costs about $20, so not on sale $25. While it has a TON of work put in it I find it hard to believe that it took more work than a majority of entire games on steam. Even for the nonlegendary skins it's 975RP so 975/1380 * 10 is about $7. A lot of games are less than $7 on steam, can you honestly tell me that making that one skin is as much work as a game that costs me $7.

Probably going to get down voted for my curiosity of why people think it's worth buying skins when they cost so much.

5 Comments

Vampy3k2/25/2015, 10:28:08 PM4 votes

Firstly, yes, that skin probably does have as much time put into it as some of the $7 games on steam. LoL has a pretty big team, including devs, artists, programmers, QA... Many smaller game companies will instead hire jack-of-all-trades, and run much more lean, so they can charge less to recoup costs.

More importantly though, is the demand and the willingness of the players to pay. It may make more sense for League to have 100 people pay 20 rather than 200 people paying $7.

If you want, compare the cost to the skins and mounts in Heroes of the Storm. Now THAT is an expensive f2p game.

OhOkYeah2/25/2015, 10:31:53 PM3 votes

Must be a lot of filthy rich people that play this game for the prices to stay so high. I will pay those prices when the game has more features such as casual game modes besides ARAM or the ability to truly customize "custom" games. Otherwise the dollar value compared to the amount of entertainment gained per dollar is too low.

Sirsir2/26/2015, 2:39:33 AM2 votes

Game is free to play, they have to turn a profit somehow.

Steam games generally don't have to worry about supporting a lot of websites and servers, and they are usually smaller groups with less output.

Jamnon2/25/2015, 11:24:47 PM1 votes

$50 will generally grant you access to a f2p games previous content. That much in RP will not. Perspective.

Matthias91192/26/2015, 1:45:14 AM1 votes

Mostly skins are expensive because they are the only thing you can't get through F2P means.

Legendary skins have a ton of work put into them. I would guess 5-10x as many man-hours as a regular skin.

If you don't think it's worth $20, don't pay it. If nobody was paying for them, Riot would lower prices.