‘Fortnite for older kids’: CoD players think skins have gone way too far

A selection of Call of Duty players have had enough of the out-of-this-world cosmetics taking over the popular FPS this week, with some going so far as to say CoD has become the “Fortnite for older kids” due to the number of crossover microtransactions in the game.

An image of Marvel characters Spawn and Violator was posted to Reddit this week, only they weren’t battling each other in the comics—it was in Modern Warfare 2.

The post’s author laments what happened to CoD, saying they haven’t played since 2012’s Black Ops 2 and cannot believe how the franchise has changed in the last 11 years, with the game now dominated by random crossover skins.

Naturally, players chimed in to bash Activision and CoD, holding the general sentiment that greed has ruined this long-standing franchise. Some even described how teams can actually look like with all the sponsorships and deals Activision has made.

“Just played a game as Homelander, Skeletor, Kevin Durant, and Nikki Minaj,” one user remarked. Another expanded upon the idea, saying that one team could have the likes of Leo Messi, Snoop Dogg, Spawn, Starlight, Lara Croft, and Alucard fighting Skeletor, Nicki Minaj, Homelander, 21 Savage, Lilith, and The Shredder.

Now, that was a mouthful, and it’s not even close to including all of the available pop culture characters that have somehow found their way into a military shooter priding itself on a touch of realism.

Based on the likes of Quake and Doom, as well as taking inspiration from other popular shooters of the late 1990s and early 2000s, early editions of CoD felt very “arcadey” compared to the likes of the Battlefield franchise.

However, Modern Warfare (2007) and World at War (2008) flipped a switch and turned the franchise into a more gritty, cutthroat franchise that only used such arcade aspects for multiplayer action.

So, what happened in the last decade? Greed, says one user in the thread, and even perhaps Activision’s attempt at mimicking Epic Games’ Fortnite and their monetization system as another user put it.

Activision isn’t solely to blame here, as some popular characters like Alucard never got their own game. Instead, the first time they appear as a fully-fledged character is—go figure—as an expensive cosmetic in a CoD game.

Elements like this actually make players wonder why don’t we have games instead of skins. Users discussed what a Spawn game would potentially look like, and I must say they’re probably on to something. Either way, it’s just wishful thinking.

At any rate, the players are reasonably disappointed with the franchise’s direction in the past several years, and it seems like we won’t be seeing the end of it soon.