Apex Legends’ Final Fantasy VII Crossover Prompts Fan Outcry. Players of the battle royale shooter are baffled by the $300+ price for the cosmetics

Lmfao $300+?!

What's funny about this stuff, is Apex Legends developers more than likely gets paid to include this cross promotional material in their game, then they turn around and sell it to players. Really this is all just an ad, and if you pay for an ad you're an idiot.

The big price tag is part of the ad! That's how you get mentioned and people speak about it.
Some idiots will also buy it, so there's that, too.
I actually don't care if a free to play game has cosmetics you can buy. They need to make some money some how. As long as you don't get a real advantage by paying money.
- I also don't mind being able to purchase cosmetic, non-gameplay affecting items. But I have always felt the prices are wack as fuck, even back when Horse Armor dropped. A skin should not be more than $1, IMO. Especially skins that are nothing more than a color swap.
Whats funny about this is /people still play games with microtransactions at all/.
- It's complicated.
  The game itself can be extremely good, well made, and fun. You can choose not to participate in the MTX stuff.
  Kinda wonder what would happen if such a game came out, was insanely popular, but literally nobody bought any MTX in it ever. Obviously a FTP game would just die, but would they take the hint if it was a $60-70 AAA game that also included BS MTX systems?
  It's not like MTX is popular. They specifically go after the small percentage of players that get addicted and spend their life savings on that shit.

Only legislation will stop this.

If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else.

I can't even respect people defending this, when the glorified fake hats cost orders of magnitude more than a whole-ass game. Five bucks for all of what's new would still be exploitation built on psychological manipulation constantly steering people toward throwing more real money at content that's already visibly on their computer. When it's hundreds of actual dollars, for one stupid thing, how do you not see the wider problem?

This doesn't exist in a vacuum. This is what the entire game is for. It only exists as bait on this hook.

when the glorified fake hats cost orders of magnitude more than a whole-ass game.
This is the exact reason I never bought anything when TF2 introduced this garbage to gaming. The hats, which were the most desirable cosmetics, were (and probably still are) more than it would cost to have the same exact hat made IRL.
I don't know where they come up with the prices for this crap. Even the first micro DLC to come about, Horse Armor for Oblivion, was extremely expensive given the content (2 different models and skins with no actual gameplay value for $5).
- Horse armor was 100% above-board, relative to this abuse. It was new content. It was dumb, and solved a problem the devs themselves caused, but you paid for and received a digital purchase. That is never the same thing as paying so your character can say they have something.
  If it's already on your computer - charging for it is probably a scam.
I don't really get why this matters that much? If they want to charge ridiculous amounts for stupid cosmetic shit, users don't have to buy it. I've put a couple hundred hours into Apex and Fortnite and have literally spent $0. Best investment I've ever made.
- Congratulations on resisting manufactured discontent and weaponized frustration. Even if they never crack you, personally - they'll get a lot of people, and take them for as much as they're worth. Some for thousands upon thousands of dollars. For hats.
  The entire industry is becoming infected by this business model. It is the dominant strategy. It's in full-price, major-franchise, single-player games. It's in subscription MMOs. All dismissive excuses have been proven wrong. It's naked greed, on top of whatever money they can already charge. And in pursuit of that, these products are made objectively less enjoyable. They openly employ fear and impatience to provoke irrational decisions. Your enjoyment without paying them is a bug to be fixed.
  At this point they must consider you an NPC. A generic inconstant target for paying users to feel superior to. That feeling is the only reason you can throw money at this crap. The entire experience has been engineered to maximize how much better you feel, every time you fork over more money - moderated only by keeping you addicted so you never just leave. The longer they have you padding their servers, the more they can harass you with limited-time offers for shiny nonsense.
  Why is that tolerable?
  This has become half the industry, by revenue. What part of that is not a horrifying warning of things gone wrong? It's not like the billions in revenue have been great for anyone doing the work, what with investment-drunk publishers slashing studios apart. Turns out when you forecast unlimited revenue, there's no such thing as enough.

I laugh at stuff like this. Mainly because people actually buy this dumb shit.

Fucking respawn. They were the chosen ones. They were supposed to save us from the micro transactions, not join them.

I wouldn't call these "micro" anymore lol.
- Micro content; macro price.
Not to say I'm not disappointed with respawn, but they handed over Apex development/maintenance to another studio in 2020

The only person I knew that really loved and still loves Apex to this day is the one crypto-bro I was unfortunate enough to have to deal with.

I only started playing apex when the new season started because ea doesn't want to let me plat titanfall 2 anymore.
The game is honestly really fun. But holy shit, people should really stop spending money on it.