If people stopped paying ridiculous prices for cosmetic shit like this maybe we could see reasonable prices like $1 recolours of things. There's absolutely no reason changing the colour of something should cost $30 other than the fact that people fucking pay for it, and it means other more sensible dollar-conscious players get priced out of the fun little things like that.
Oh well, the market clearly accepts paid cosmetics. It sucks for people who don't spend money on it like me but at the end of the day people will blow cash on it and that's why it keeps getting up charged.
If it didn't cost anything they wouldn't do it at all. You already paid for it, they have your money. They do the extra stuff to try and squeeze out more money.
They couldn't charge for it, cause games were mostly offline. In this era of always-online stuff... People pay for it. Not the majority, but there are enough whales to cover for everyone, apparently... So companies do it. Gaming has become an industry. It's not run by passionate developers anymore, but by investors. Why would they not charge for it in this time and age? There is literally no incentive, from their perspective of "we're selling a product".