They aren’t giving it to us now at all, and the work is being done regardless of them giving it to use because the skin is for the boss. I don’t see where there is anything to justify it NOT being free. Freebies is how you attract more players; players = volume = higher sales. It’s a proven fact that player volume increases sales. I can’t think of any game where you’d sacrifice 1% player volume to have 1% extra of the players be whales. You’ll just about always have a higher profit with every 1% of added player volume. The partnership with bandai shouldn’t affect this, and if anything they would probably agree with this strategy, as it’s basically what they have forced WoTC to do with Magic The Gathering verbatim back in May of 2016 by having them redevelop their planeswalker box sets which devalued secondary market, but it was in favor of gaining new players at a cheaper entry for standard.
All features are profitable. Even free ones. And CPG currently has a history with free (albeit limited) skins. I was in sales up until about a week ago, and paywalls are proven to fail. The more paywalls the less likely something is to succeed. They just don’t work.
Freebies translate to happy players; happy players will equal more money spent per %. I’m personally incentivised to support a company I like more than buying things I like which I feel is pretty common in the demographic that plays these sort of games.
I could be entirely wrong here, and I do believe you’re right that you’d end up with a few players purchasing every boss crate if it gave them access to the skins but I don’t believe it’d be equal to those who stopped paying for content altogether feeling disenfranchised over more paywall content.
but I don’t like card games I like board games so maybe that’s why.