> As a consumer I might take a worse deal if it meant supporting a small creator whom I knew was sacrificing a lot for art.

do you see how you and people who buy skins have something in common? you are writing about this, you will PAY for people to NOTICE that you support indie game developers. okay, and 13 year olds will pay for people to notice their cool skins. there are many ways to monetize, you are telling us that you would be monetize in the same category of monetization as freemium games, so are they really so bad? is ownership really important, or does it really belong to the same "noticing" category of monetization?