We live in interesting times.

Eurogamer is reporting that even the /r/Fallout76 subreddit is rebelling against the high prices of the Christmas cosmetics in the Fallout 76 Atom Store. A Santa/Mrs. Claus outfit plus Stuffed Radstag CAMP decoration and matching player icons is retailing for 2000 Atoms, or basically $20. Then there’s a Red Rocket Mega Sign for $14, set of Holiday Emotes for $12, and the perennial Power Armor paint jobs that debut on release for $18.

The article ends on this note:

It’s worth pointing out all this stuff does not affect gameplay, beyond the aesthetic. You can’t pay for a powerful weapon or more perk cards, for example. Still, at these prices, it’s easy to see why players feel like they’re getting ripped off.

It’s also not a good look for Fallout 76 at this point in its life, a month after the disastrous launch. It is (was) a full-price game. Selling skins at the kind of price you’d expect to see from the free-to-play Fortnite doesn’t make a lot of sense for those who paid full whack at release.

It’s worth noting (again) that you earn Atoms from in-game activities. At level 70, I have accumulated around 3000. The bulk came from one-time “challenges,” but there is a trickle of daily quest-esque rewards and some weekly ones that, combined, will give you about 570 Atoms per week. The angle is clear for all to see though: Bethesda wants you to purchase a few big-ticket items with the first hit of cash shop crack, and then bust out your credit card for the rest.

This, of course, makes Bethesda a monstrous, amoral scumbug, charging nearly half the cost of the base game for the modern equivalent of horse armor. Did they think they could get away with it because Fortnite charges more?!?!?!

Clearly, you should log out of this always-online multiplayer game and log into Guild Wars 2…

When you convert the tricky gem prices, you get $8.75 for cosmetic clothes, $5 for glider skins, $12.50 for new resource node animations, $5 for random mount skins, $15 for a specific mount skin, or $25 for a super-special mount skin. This is to say nothing about selling bank tabs and bag slots in a game especially designed to fill your inventory with massive amounts of junk.

Let’s log into WoW instead…

Ah, almost the original home of the $10 pet and $25 mount, to say nothing about the completely outlandish prices for character services like name changes and server moves.

Or maybe log onto Elder Scrolls Online…

Crowns appear to be 100:$1 ratio when not on sale, so that’s about $4 for hair, $5 for emotes, and between $9 and $30 for mounts. There is also a housing section in the store that features, at the top end, “The Orbservatory Prior” clocking in at $150 (furnished). I don’t know enough about ESO to comment on the value proposition of that purchase, but there it is.

“Fallout 76 isn’t an MMO!” I agree. But we all knew going in that Bethesda was going to pay for Fallout 76’s ongoing costs by way of cash shop purchases. Some of these complaints seem to be from people awakening from cryogenic sleep, discovering modern multiplayer gaming for the first time. While many are saying that the prices should be lower, I am not entirely convinced it could ever be low enough to bypass the “controversy.”

Did I think at the end of 2018 that I would be defending Bethesda cash shop purchases? No. The Atom Shop stuff is certainly more expensive than I would ever pay, if I did not have about $30 worth of credit from playing the game. And I am sympathetic to the argument that a full-fledged MMO has a greater volume of content that could conceivably justify higher prices elsewhere.

That said, complaining about the Fallout 76 store is a reach. If/when Bethesda starting putting shit in lockboxes – like they did with Fallout Shelter, a F2P mobile game everyone praised – that’s when the knives should come back out. Until then, stick to the legitimate, if boring, stuff like bugs and PR.