Have We Finally Seen the End of Silly Skins in FPS Games?

We may finally be approaching the end of absurd skins in first-person shooters. In 2018, Fortnite introduced its first ever crossover with a big pop culture event. The event celebrated the release of Avengers: Infinity War and let players play as Thanos if they claimed the Infinity Gauntlet in-game. Within months, Fortnite started curating more and more crossovers and eventually featured skins of some of the biggest characters within fiction. It was a lucrative business model for a free game, as you could get way more money over a longer period of time by selling skins for $10 – $20 a pop.

Competitors like Call of Duty took note. Roughly six months after Activision launched Call of Duty: Warzone in 2020, they started adding crossover skins starting with horror icons like Jigsaw and Leatherface. Five years later, Call of Duty now regularly has big crossovers and it’s a big point of contention. While some characters fit, players have pushed back against Call of Duty skins for brands like American Dad and Beavis and Butthead. Fans feel like Call of Duty has begun to lose its identity due to how many different franchises are now in the series and how they don’t jive with the tone or aesthetic present in the game’s campaign, which largely sets the stage for the way the rest of the game feels.

Call of Duty isn’t the only one with this problem, though. This has stretched to other games that otherwise have fairly grounded tones like Rainbow Six Siege and PUBG. This isn’t really an issue for Fortnite because the game is like a toybox come to life, the idea of collaborations is foundational to that game. However, these absurd crossovers and the goofy skins that come with them may be winding down, at least for some of the biggest games.

How Battlefield 6 Influenced Black Ops 7’s Latest Change

After seeing the vocal backlash to the intrusive skins in Call of Duty, EA decided it wouldn’t follow the trends for its newest shooter. Instead, Battlefield 6 took a stance to be grounded and authentic with its cosmetic items.

“What I will say is what’s really important to us is that things feel grounded, and we want people to express themselves and to have cool skins and peacock in a way like ‘I look pretty cool and I have this great weapon skin,’” said Battlefield 6 producer Alexia Christofi at the game’s reveal event in July. “But we want it to feel authentic to the franchise, that’s the approach we’re thinking.”

So far, the skins we’ve seen for the full game seem to stick true to that and fans are loving it. Of course, all of this could change in the future, but it does seem like something EA will probably stick to. Battlefield 2042 had crossovers with games like Mass Effect and Dead Space, but they tried to incorporate these cosmetic items in a way that fit Battlefield. It’s not like you could walk around as Commander Shepherd, it was more that you had N7-themed gear. It was more tame than what competitors were doing and never drew much ire from fans.

The response also seems to have had an effect on Call of Duty. In mid-August, Black Ops 7 was revealed and it was confirmed that it would have carry forward, a system that lets players bring over their weapons and cosmetics from the previous game. This was a feature that fans really enjoyed in Modern Warfare III and helped defend against the allegations of it being a glorified Modern Warfare II DLC. However, fans were immediately sour on the idea for Black Ops 7 because they didn’t want the goofy skins of Black Ops 6 in the new game.

A week later, Activision changed course and announced that carry forward would no longer be part of Black Ops 7. This was partially done as a way to start changing how Call of Duty handles cosmetics. The team confirmed they are looking to create more authentic skins that are more immersive for players as opposed to jarring and distracting, meaning Black Ops 6 skins have no place in the game.

Carry forward was confirmed to be in Black Ops 7 at a press event just two weeks after Battlefield 6 was revealed and days after the game held its first beta weekend. It seems like Activision may have paid attention to what EA was doing and the positive reception it was garnering. Not only that, but they may have felt a more intense backlash from fans now that they had gotten a taste of a more grounded military shooter that was seemingly giving them all of the things they’d been asking for. The change was incredibly sudden, but shows that Activision may be more receptive to feedback than ever now that it has some serious competition.

If Battlefield 6 is a success and Call of Duty can still make boat loads of money without the over the top crossover skins, this could be the end of an era. If the two biggest leaders in the genre can make the shift, it seems likely others would follow their lead. However, for some of those smaller games, they may need to lean on crossovers to be financially viable.

Perhaps this will encourage shooter franchises like Call of Duty to look at more appropriate crossovers for things like The Terminal List or The Accountant, things that are more “realistic” and have recognizable faces, but don’t feel out of place in the world of Call of Duty. Only time will tell what actually happens in the long run, but this does feel like the tides are changing and it’s time for customers to put their money where their mouth is.

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