Yesterday, after 1,410 days (or 3 years and 10 months) the Grim Medicine cosmetic set – complete with the popular Plague Doctor skin – has returned Fourteen days‘s In-game store where players can purchase it for the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. And many believe it was the pandemic itself that kept plague-themed items and skins out of the game for so long.
I doubt I need to explain that Fourteen days for you, but just so everyone is on the same page: Epic’s Fourteen days is a free-to-play battle royale PVP shooter available on almost every modern platform out there. It supports crossplay for everyone and has been one of the most popular games in the world in recent years as it continues to expand and include more characters from other franchises such as: war of stars, Dragon Ball Z, and street fighter.
but Fourteen days also has many original skins and cosmetic items of its own, like Peely and the aforementioned plague doctor. But as of yesterday, those plague-related items hadn’t appeared in the game since March 1, 2019, making them extremely rare as the only people who could use them were people who bought them back when they were last available. Now, most other skins keep popping up in the store every few weeks or months.
Fans had theorized that the Grim Medicine cosmetic set had been blacklisted and withdrawn due to Epic Covid-19 pandemic. This makes sense as including these skins would have been a bad look during the height of the deadly pandemic that has killed over 6 million people worldwide as of January 2023.
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The working theory is that the skin appeared in the store on March 1st, 2019. Before he could appear in the store again, Covid-19 was detected in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and eventually spread across the world and officially became a pandemic, according to the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. It’s not unreasonable that Epic saw this and decided to remove the Pest items from the store’s rotation to avoid controversy.
The thing is, at no point has Epic officially confirmed this theory. my city reached out about the skin and the length of time between its release, but haven’t heard from the company. While Epic hasn’t officially confirmed the reason the Grim Medicine items disappeared for almost four years, the Covid-19 theory doesn’t strike me as unreasonable. And whatever the reason, many players were happy about his return, if only to make a joke about his long absence. Or to point it out Covid-19 will still be an issue in 2023what it is, and it’s deadly and dangerous too.
“One of my friends IMMEDIATELY threw money into the game upon receiving this notification. Been waiting since it was last in store,” one person tweeted. “LET’S GO! I finally have the plague!!! I’ve wanted him for two years,” another player tweeted to see the news of the Plague Doctor’s return to Fourteen days. Of course, there were other players who found it funny that everyone loved the skin, and others who already owned it and were now sad that their once-rare skin was becoming commonplace again.
Personally, I’m not keen on the Grim Medicine skins as I don’t really like the way they look. Also, I prefer to only buy the most cursed and bizarre skins Fourteen dayslike Mr. Meeseeks from Rick and Morty.
