While it might not be everyone's cup of tea, Call of Duty has remained one of the gaming world's dominant franchises for nearly two decades, yet many players have grown frustrated over 'insanely stupid' changes that are costing people money.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is considered by many to be one of the key catalysts for how multiplayer games have developed over the past 20 years, especially on console.
Its fast paced mechanics and modern setting captured the attention of millions, and yearly Call of Duty releases iteratively improved on the formula that continued to be successful.
What originally began as a pay-once experience though slowly began to integrate microtransactions and paid cosmetics as the industry increasingly welcomed alternative revenue streams, yet many today look fondly back on the days when a handful of store skins were all that was on offer.
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What changes have people called 'insanely stupid'?
By far the biggest complaint that the gaming community has with the modern Call of Duty experience is the excessive microtransactions - both in price and in content.
One post on Reddit perhaps sums this up best, as u/HerculeMuscles shares what they call 'the state of Black Ops 6' on r/gaming, which amounts to image of the game's new event pass, including a Beavis and Butt-head themed skin.
"When I first saw leaks of this I thought it was a joke. It's so insanely stupid," writes one comment underneath the post, adding also that it's "painfully obvious that they thought they could just copy Fortnite's homework."
Relatively speaking this particular skin feels quite tame compared to some of the cosmetics that Call of Duty has released in recent years, which range from celebrities like Nicki Minaj to bizarre googly-eyed animatronics that would certainly look out of place on the battlegrounds of Modern Warfare.
While Call of Duty has allowed players to pay for gun camos since Black Ops 2, the series has followed in the footsteps of Fortnite when it comes to extravagant and arguably out of place collaborations in recent years.
"They keep doing this because it makes money," writes another comment. "The majority that are buying this are probably not on this site."
A third proclaims that "you can blame Fortnite all you want, but CoD keeps adding these types of collabs because the previous ones worked, so blame players."
Many simply wish there was an option on the player's side to disable any cosmetic skins as it has become a frustrating distraction, but there's little chance of that happening when so much of the game's financials are driven by sales from the in-game store.