The new Peak Fortnite collab has finally been released in the battle royale. However, players have noticed that the new Fortnite skins are actually three times more expensive than if you just purchased the full Peak game itself.
Fortnite Peak Skins Cost More Than the Game Itself After V-Bucks Price Increase
Ever since the Fortnite V-Bucks price increase this month, players have been feeling the squeeze. You now get around 14% less in the battle royale currency when buying bundles. While this might not have been initially tangible to some users, the inflation recently got very real for many when players realized that the Peak Fortnite collab is substantially more expensive than the game it was based on.
The full Peak Fortnite collab bundle costs 2,500 V-Bucks, which is roughly $23. However, the indie title usually retails for $7.99 (it’s on sale right now for $4.95 on Steam). So doing the rough math, the Peak Fortnite skins are roughly 3x more expensive than Peak itself. The price difference between the Chapter 7 Season 2 cosmetics and the game immediately raised some eyebrows in the Fortnite community.
Fortnite Players React to Peak Pricing
Following its launch on March 22, Fortnite players took to social media to sound off on the Peak collab’s item shop pricing. The crossover drew mixed reactions, as some fans of the battle royale honed in on the skins being pricier than the game itself.
“The PEAK skin in Fortnite is MORE EXPENSIVE than the game itself,” a user on X wrote, for example. Another commenter exclaimed, “Worse than this game costing 8 bucks, with 8 bucks these days you can’t even buy 800 V-Bucks.” One fan simply vented, “For that price, you can buy the game plus 3 versions for your partners.”
It should be pointed out that these collaborations do split revenue between Epic Games and the game’s studio. Not to mention, Epic still has to develop and create the skins so that they work in the battle royale. So regardless if a title costs $1.99 or $70, the same amount of work is still going to go into making a cosmetic from it. Although I also understand players re-considering what they spend their money on, given the recent price increase in V-Bucks.
Are Fortnite Skins Getting Too Expensive?
As I mentioned above, I think people fixating on the price of Peak is a bit of a confusing argument. Just because a game is cheaper doesn’t mean the amount of work that needs to go into a Fortnite skin changes. If anything, the Peak Fortnite collab is one of the more customizable skins to be released in some time.
According to dataminer ShiinaBR, the Peak Fortnite skins have over 2,250 style variations. That is because Epic designed the cosmetic to allow players to custom create faces and outfits like you can in the Peak game itself. Again, this might not sound complex, but a skin this customizable could easily break in-game animations.
That said, I also understand Fortnite players deciding that recent crossovers are just too expensive. The recent Game of Thrones Fortnite collab, for example, is being sold for 4,000 V-Bucks, which is roughly $30. So if the argument is that skins in general have become too pricey, I totally get that.
I think cosmetic skins have been getting more expensive in all games across the board lately. For example, the recent Overwatch Persona 5 crossover is quite pricey. The cosmetics are also more expensive than the Persona 5 game itself. In Diablo 4, it’s not that uncommon to see skins go for as high as $30 to $40.
So I think it’s perfectly reasonable to decide that skins have become too expensive to spend money on, especially when they are now being sold at a higher price than full games themselves.
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