Valorant skins are expensive. For example, the Elderflame set released in July costs about $100 for the full collection of five. The recent Nebula collection is a little cheaper, but not by much: $70 for the whole thing. This is more than the launch price of a new game from a major studio.

In a recent interview, Riot said that Valorant's weapon skins are not cheap, but they shouldn't be.

"We set a precedent with Valorant that the type of content we create is not intended to be "cheap." We don't want players to look at something and say, "This feels cheap." That's kind of the whole Riot approach, but what we focus on with all of our skins is that we want people to feel that there is a level of effort and care that goes into the skins and any cosmetic content that people engage with that they feel is worthwhile. We don't want it to be a throwaway.

"Whatever we create, we think about the end experience the player gets with it," added producer Preeti Kanorkar.

"It's one thing to have a static image of the galaxy on a gun, but the feeling of flying through space and the freedom and fantasy that comes with that is what we wanted to achieve with that [Nebula's] skin."

While the large price tag of the skin bundle is eye-catching, Senior Revenue Strategy Manager Joe Lee said that from Riot's experience with League of Legends, most Riot fans approach it on an a la carte basis, picking the individual pieces they want and leaving the rest " When we release themes, for example Star Guardian is one of our most popular themes, but its bundles also range from $70 to $100. People who really like Star Guardian will purchase the entire bundle."

The big spenders in the free-to-play market, commonly referred to as "whales," make up a small but highly lucrative portion of players; Riot acknowledged that full-skin bundles are particularly attractive to "high monetizers," but said they are not specifically going after that demographic He said that the main focus is on the Valorant Battle Pass, which offers a variety of skins and other in-game items that can be unlocked through gameplay. Like the Battle Pass for other games, all players will have access to the free reward track, while the "premium" track will be available for 1000 Valorant points (about $10).

"This should be the most profitable product, with the highest number of players choosing this experience. And on the content side, we want to offer a variety of themed experiences with Battle Pass, and you'll notice that there are three themes, and we're going to be offering a lot of themed experiences, and we're going to be offering a lot of themed experiences with the Battle Pass." That's what premium content is trying very hard to do, so Battle Pass appeals to as many people as possible."

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By its very nature, the Battle Pass must include a little bit of everything to maximize its appeal, and Riot also wants to ensure that the content it offers is accessible with reasonable effort, Khanolkar said. She cited the example of the Vandal assault rifle Dot Exe skin offered at level 45 in the first Valorant Battle Pass, and after many players missed it, Riot made the Hivemind Vandal skin at level 25 in the second Battle Pass "more achievable and easier to achieve," he stated.

"We want players to have a variety of skins," Riot said. We've given a lot of thought to what's in the Battle Pass." The third will appear in the next Act. [Valorant's Act 3 actually launched on October 13.] To that end, we are really thinking hard about what we can create here for players who play exclusively on the Battle Pass.

The Valorant store takes sort of the opposite approach, selling a very limited number of skins on a rotating basis. The "featured" skin bundle is available to all players for two weeks, and the "offers" are a random selection of four different skins, which are replaced every few days. When I first looked at the store, I was struck by the oddity that the majority of skins were not available for purchase. While "take my money and give me the skins I want" seems like a fairly simple proposition, Riot sees this as a way to allow exclusivity and, as Lee puts it, "'I was there' moments."

"Players who have been with us since launch have seen all the Feature themes, including Prime, Sovereign, Dragon, and Elderflame. When they buy it and it's gone from the store, we say, 'Oh, this person has been with us from the beginning, got interested in that theme, and bought it. People down the road can still get it, but they just need to be a little lucky to get it in the store."

Keeping players satisfied and engaged is clearly a worthy goal, but Riot also has more practical concerns: Valorant is free to play; it's not a "free game," and it's not a "free game" at all; it's not a "free game" at all; and it's not a "free game" at all, either. You can jump in and start blasting away as much or as little as you like, without being at a competitive disadvantage and without dropping a single penny. Loot boxes were key to the financial viability of free-to-play games for a while, but EA went a bit too far with "Star Wars Battlefront" in 2017, sparking a huge backlash and leading to regulatory moves in some countries, which inevitably led to a sharp decline in their use. For example, "Overwatch" director Jeff Kaplan said that Blizzard is "exploring different options to move away from loot boxes" in "Overwatch 2," and EA's latest "Star Wars" game, "Squadrons," completely eliminated them.

Riot's approach to monetizing Valorant also avoids randomized loot boxes while maintaining an element of chance. Since players cannot keep opening crates until they get what they want, the process is slower, but also less looting.

"We felt early on that players would be excited to go back and check the store every time it was updated. There's a countdown and someone says, "Oh, what's in it this time?" and there's a moment of surprise of sorts"

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"If everything was always available for purchase, someone might think, 'Okay, I can always go buy whatever I want.' But [with this system], there's an action that says, 'Oh, I'm excited to go look at it. We're getting a lot of good feedback in that regard."

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In the absence of loot boxes that rely on variable drop rates to determine skin rarity, Valorant's skin prices also establish a different, and in some ways more direct, value hierarchy. Instead of luck, it's all about what you can (and are willing to) pay: while there may be plenty of people who are happy to spend a dollar or two on a nice new skin, far fewer will feel the same way about throwing down $20+ for one, or $100 for a set. This is a tradeoff, and change is always possible. However, Lee emphasized that he does not plan to move to a random drop or CS:GO-style external skin market.

"It's not a model we can be comfortable with in our game," he said.

$20 for a gun skin still seems wild to me.

$20 for a gun skin still seems wild to me. I bought a Sea of Thieves monkey for a quarter of that and he dances and screams and I can shoot him out of a cannon when he gets on my nerves. However, Riot seems satisfied with how well things are going so far, and their priority for now is to increase the variety of skins available at all tiers.

"Not everything is for everyone. When we develop, we have to think of it that way, and as a player, you won't like every execution," says Khanolkar. 'It's early in development, so we don't have a lot of options. We are doing our best to have many, but over time our catalog will expand and players will hopefully be able to identify tons of things that appeal to them."

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