It started with a horse. An admittedly fabulous horse, decked out in the finest of equine armours for a mere fiver of cold hard American currency, setting off a tidal wave of new business within gaming back in the day. DLC has become part of the very DNA of video games, molecules of cosmetic extras that publishers seek to splice further into games and engineer some sweet profits in the process.
For a game such as Valorant, it may have just reached the zenith of that digital tinkering, as Riot Games has rolled out a new selection of skins that exists as the apex predator of monetisation. Plus there’s a freakin’ dragon thrown into the mix. If you’ve got more cents than common sense, you can head into Valorant right now to grab a $100 skin set, an ultra-tier assortment of pretend clothing that also turns your guns into a dragon:
The catch here, as PC Gamer explained, is that this comes from Valorant skin tier pricing system, which kind of sounds like a messed prequel to The Silence of the Lambs. Skin rarity begins at Select, works its way through Deluxe and Premium and then tops out at Ultra, while the more fluid Exclusive tier features a more random selection of prices.
Ultra skins are priced at 2475 Valorant Points, with the in-game currency ranging in price from $5 for 475 VP to $100 for 11 000 VP. Seeing as how this Elderflame set was a bundle of four, that works out to $100 for the entire ensemble.
Of course, the slavings don’t stop there! You’re still able to enhance those skins with Radianite, a currency earned through the battle pass (or bought with more VP if you feel like spending more money than time on unlocking digital stuff), with the upgraded skins being capable of showing off fancy new emotes, finishers and other animations. It’s basically a casino for DLC at this point, with that $100 spent being the bare minimum you’ll need just to get your first set of peacock feathers:
Truth be told though, that’s still one hell of a dragon.
Last Updated: July 9, 2020
Llama In The Rift
July 9, 2020 at 09:12
https://media0.giphy.com/media/33dVHGDoVYPEk/giphy.gif Forget the whales….Release the Kraken!
Pariah
July 9, 2020 at 09:44
Fans will be 100% fine with this as long as they keep resetting the ladder every 3 months to add new mechanics under the guise of ‘new content’. Just do that for a couple years, and boy will the fans be happy, they’ll even go so far as to defend those prices.
Hammersteyn
July 9, 2020 at 10:48
https://media0.giphy.com/media/wOe1XNgWCNoqY/giphy-downsized-medium.gif
CrAiGiSh
July 9, 2020 at 11:02
Aaannnddd that is how you destroy Valorant.
GGWP.