Back when Warzone 1.0 was around, fans were in an uproar over a particular Roze skin. The skin itself was just all black from head to toe, with black boots, a black mask, and black everything else. It was so black that players using this skin could easily blend in with the shadows to become effectively invisible. It provided a tangible advantage over players that weren’t wearing the skin, and so for a time, everyone wore it. Warzone players that couldn’t afford the skin cried pay-to-win, and Raven eventually increased the Roze skin’s contrast to make it more visible in shadows.
Almost two years later, Warzone 2.0 just received its own all-black skin courtesy of esports team LA Thieves. The LA Thieves Pack just went on sale and fans are already calling the skin "Roze 2.0."
Just like Roze 1.0, the skin is all black. The package also contains a white skin for home games (or away games, I forget Call of Duty League’s colorization rules) and both have a red "LA" logo on the front, but it’s pretty subtle. And as you can see in the video here, wearing the LA Thieves skin basically makes you invisible under certain lighting conditions.
You might think that this advantage is too slight to be worth paying for, but it’s clear that there are lots of other Warzone players who’d disagree. Charlie Intel notes that the LA Thieves Pack debuted at number 11 on the Steam top-sellers chart, which means a significant number of Warzone players are picking this skin up. One wonders if, just like with Roze 1.0, those players are seeing a tangible advantage to wearing Roze 2.0 and are willing to pay for it.
One also wonders how Roze 2.0 ever made it past quality testing after the fiasco of Roze 1.0. Eurogamer cynically (and perhaps correctly) suggests either LA Thieves cleverly submitted a skin they knew would give its players an advantage on the field, or Activision greedily released a pay-to-win skin knowing it’d make a ton of money. Maybe it’s a little of both.