A gnarly new skin for Doctor Strange is causing a stir among Marvel Rival players. The $25 "Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness" skin, depicting the wizard's zombified form from the 2022 Sam Raimi film, was teased earlier this week and released today, but some customers are miffed that the in-game skin doesn't match the one advertised on the store.
It's a matter of hands—specifically, the zombie corpse hands that wrap around Strange's shoulders to form a decrepit collar. Along with Strange's rotted cheekbones and glowing eyes, the shroud of hands is the most distinctive feature of the skin, visible in the skin select screen, MVP animation, and storefront art.
But when you buy the skin and put it on in a real match, the hands disappear…like magic. All you're left with is emo Strange with a black cape made of smoke, which is kinda neat, but not what folks who dropped up to $25 on the skin had in mind. The zombie hands do briefly make an appearance while using a couple of Strange's abilities, including his ult, but blink and you miss it.
Unsurprisingly, folks are somewhere between annoyed and confused about the whole thing.
"The hands are shown in every piece of marketing in game, you can't see him without the hands until after you've purchased the skin or go look up a youtube video. It's super misleading," Reddit user Sylfaent wrote under a post complaining about the discrepancy.
"It is such a mid skin without the hands. That's so disappointing," added SignificanceExact963.
Some believe the unhanding of Strange is just a bug, which is certainly possible, but would be an uncommon error when premium cosmetics are involved. User COOPA11 shared the decent theory that it was an intentional change made to improve visibility.
"I get why they don't show, likely because they'd block your view. But still super misleading, hope they fix it for everyone who bought it!" they wrote.
Also possible, but I doubt it. Here's what the store version of the skin looks like with visible hands from behind. It certainly gives the Doc a wider silhouette, but you can still see the character and surroundings well enough.
Plus, NetEase clearly isn't that concerned with cosmetic elements obscuring character models from behind, judging by this Thor skin released with Season 2.
Bug or not, it does rate as misleading, so much so that I doubt NetEase would disagree. The studio hasn't made a statement about the missing hands yet, but I expect it'll have a make-good plan in place by this time next week.
