All forms of charging real money inside a video game are abusive. Games make you value arbitrary worthless things. That’s what makes them games. There is no ethical form of attaching a price tag to that fiction.

Randomness is only the most obvious form of that exploitation. Everyone finally agrees “lootboxes” are awful - but only to follow up, “but cosmetics are totally different!” They aren’t. They’re the same problem, with finer excuses. Game devs know how to shape your experience - that is their fucking job. They have been tasked to ease and streamline the process of giving them unlimited quantities of your actual money. Usually in exchange for essentially nothing. For things already in the game you already paid for. At prices comparable to an entire game.