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Skins can be easier to want—and easier for a game to sell—than a new level or mission because they let players express identity, signal status, and share a fresh look without changing the core rules. But the headline needs a qualification: available studies explain why people buy virtual goods; they do not show that skins universally outsell gameplay content.
What players get from a skin
A skin changes how a character, weapon, or other game element looks. Its value may be personal or social rather than mechanical: players can tailor an avatar to their taste, mark a personal goal, or show something to other people in a shared game.
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Identity, status, and novelty
Interviews with 20 active players living in France, reported by Koles, Nagy, and Vollet in 2025, identified motivations including personal and achievement goals, social belonging, prestige and status signaling, and novelty. Because this was a qualitative interview study with a geographically limited sample, it helps explain possible motives rather than estimate how common each one is among all players. Read the study.
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In a 2019 study focused on League of Legends, Marder and colleagues interviewed 32 players and identified hedonic, social, and utilitarian reasons for buying nonfunctional items. Some participants also described value in the act of transferring money to the developer, not only in the item itself. That small interview sample offers insight into possible reasons, not a representative measure of player spending. Read the study.
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Why a cosmetic purchase can be an easier sell
A cosmetic item can offer a visible change without selling an explicit objective competitive advantage. That distinction may help a publisher offer optional purchases while avoiding some of the fairness concerns associated with pay-to-win models. It is a plausible business incentive, not proof that cosmetics are cheaper to make, more profitable, or more popular in every game.
Nor does “cosmetic” always mean “irrelevant to play.” The 2025 interviews report that players may perceive some appearances or clothing as conferring advantages in particular game contexts. A skin’s perceived effect can therefore depend on the game and how its players use it, even when the item is sold as cosmetic.
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What gameplay content offers—and why it can sell too
New missions, levels, or other playable content can offer more time in a game, new goals, access to locked material, competition, or something friends can experience together. These are substantial reasons to pay; gameplay content is not inherently less appealing than a new look.
Hamari and colleagues surveyed 519 respondents about in-game content purchases and organized 19 concrete purchase reasons into six broad dimensions: unobstructed play, social interaction, competition, economical rationale, indulging the children, and unlocking content. Unobstructed play, social interaction, and economical rationale were positively associated with spending. The study concerns in-game content generally; it does not directly compare skin purchases with gameplay expansions. Read the study.
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Skins and gameplay content meet different buyer needs
| Question | Skins | Gameplay content |
|---|---|---|
| What changes for the buyer? | Appearance, self-expression, or a signal other players may see. | Access to new play, goals, or content. |
| How can it matter socially? | It can shape how a player appears in shared play and signal taste or status. | It can give friends or groups new material to play together. |
| What fairness issue can arise? | Cosmetics may avoid an explicit paid competitive advantage, though players may perceive some as advantageous in particular contexts. | Effects depend on what the content unlocks and how access relates to competition; the cited studies do not establish a general fairness comparison. |
| What do the cited studies establish? | Qualitative studies describe reasons players may value nonfunctional items; they do not establish sales totals. | A broad survey links several in-game-content motives with spending; it does not isolate gameplay DLC sales. |
Does the evidence show skins sell better?
No market-wide comparison is established by these studies. They examine player motives and associations with spending, not cross-game transaction counts or revenue for skins versus levels, missions, or expansions. “Sell better” is therefore best understood as a plausible tendency in games that sell optional virtual goods—not a universal statistic.
To establish which category sells more would require comparable sales or revenue data across specific games, with a clear definition of each category and a stated time period. The research discussed here does not provide that comparison.
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