Fortnite’s leaker and one of the most trusted news sources ShiinaBR presented a statistic that a thousand days have gone by since the crossover skins of Attack on Titan and Resident Evil appeared first in the game shop and disappeared for good. The tweet is setting the mood that the cosmetics of Resident Evil are to return in March, perhaps along with a new event collaboration of ‘Resident Evil: Requiem’ which has already sparked a debate about rarity, value, and the future of these highly-demand items among the players.
Okay, let us take a look at the numbers and try to understand what actually happened as they are really crazy if you think about it. One thousand days equals almost three whole years when Leon S. Kennedy or Mikasa Ackerman could no longer be purchased using V-Bucks. ShiinaBR who is usually fairly spot on with such things, presented the fact amidst a chart and everything, and the player reaction was… well, it was everything you could expect. Complete mayhem, aspiration, a bit of salt, and a lot of “please Epic” vibes.
The prompt division of the replies is quite amusing. On one side, there are the players who have these skins and they are conducting themselves like they are dealing with rare trading cards. “Pls don’t bring back attack on titans I got the whole bundle including eren bru,” one user states, while another expresses his anger saying, “Hope aot will never return and epic will delete them and not returning anything to owners.” It’s that collector’s mentality, right? Exclusivity is equal to value. If everybody can have it, then my cool thing is not that cool anymore. But then you swing to the other side and it’s a whole crowd of people who missed out. “I’m saving up for the RE skins. Leon and Jill plz!” and “Come back to me Claire 🙏🙏🙏” are just a few examples. The demand is clearly still enormous.
Resident Evil is in a somewhat better position, though. ShiinaBR’s tweet links the return to a possible March ‘Resident Evil: Requiem’ collaboration, hence the player being able to speculate a lot. Some are even expressing their desire for new styles, like Leon getting his classic jacket look. “I didn’t buy Leon last time as a protest against not giving him his classic waist-high jacket, and now I am starting to regret that,” one player confessed. Others are already doing their budgeting: “I have all of the RE skins except for Chris and I’ll get him when he comes back in March.” It feels like a waiting game with an uncertain expiration date.
On the other hand, the Attack on Titan situation is… unclear. Many players are honestly surprised that Epic did not expand that set. “Really surprised we never got more AOT skins,” one answer identifies. “Especially with Eren being locked to a BP, it would make a lot of sense to have his time skip version be a shop skin.” That’s a very valid point! Eren Jaeger was a Chapter 4 Season 2 Battle Pass skin, thus he is gone forever. But that also means the only way to get any AoT character was through the individual item shop skins for Levi, Mikasa, and the Eren Yeager (Titan Form) and those have not even been seen. That puts the fans of the series who started playing after that season in a really weird situation where they are just completely out of luck. Some are literally pleading for their return—”this is sick I just want eren and levi skins”—while the current owners are clinging to their digital items for dear life.
It gets more elaborate. One person’s comment about “Blue Team Leader” skin, claiming this is the rarest skin ever in Fortnite, created an entire debate around PlayStation Plus exclusives and the legitimacy of codes. It is that level of deep-cut community knowledge that gets invoked at the time of rarity discussion. People get very enthusiastic! And you also have the regular gamer trick of self-deprecation: “I am glad to have Eren lamentably I didn’t have vbuck at the time to get the resident evil skins or the other attack on titan skins so sadly I am not a true fan.” Understandable.
Thus, what does this all mean? It is a perfect mirror of the psychology of modern live-service gaming. Epic Games uses the techniques of timed exclusivity and long absences to create a big demand and an event-like atmosphere when the items finally become available again. That 1,000-day point is not unintentional; it is the hype generator. For the players, this means two opposing groups: the haves and the have-nots, both with very intense feelings. The possible comeback of the Resident Evil cosmetics in March illustrates how these partnerships can have second, and the community discussions often extend to platforms like Xbox.
