Coromon is on sale right now for $5, but I’m hesitant to purchase it after discovering that they have microtransactions and a cosmetics store embedded into the game. Like, I love and try to support indie developers as much as I can, so I have a growing list of indie games on my wish list on Steam that I often purchase. I was shocked and honestly confused. Why would any Indy developer do this their game? It seems counterintuitive and honestly just stupid. I mean, look at any other successful indie game out there. Stardew Valley, undertale, Celeste, cassette beasts, just to name a few. None of these have any sort of microtransaction or cosmetics that you can buy in the game that I’m aware of. A soundtrack, sure.
It just kind of makes me apprehensive to buy any sort of game like that, like why couldn’t you just develop a new DLC for 10 or 15 bucks that has a bunch of additional cosmetics included in it and label it as character customization additions included? When you hear Mike or transactions or cosmetics, you think of cash shop bullshit like EA, Activision, Fortnite. So strange to me!
The difference is cosmetic items in an in-game shop are designed to get you to “browse” the store regularly and then become mentally conditioned to “shopping” for additional things to buy that aren’t included in the game. This is a very unnatural way of acquiring cosmetics in a video game. A more natural approach is to simply discover them in the game or earn them through gameplay. Simple example: Red tiger camo in Call of Duty 4. No need to browse a shop and see skins and wade through other crap to find the one you want and then see a price tag. You also don’t have to see a DLC you don’t have, since you haven’t bought it. Adding things in a game and being like “Sorry, you don’t have this… but you COULD have it, for $5!” that’s just nutty to me