Plague Inc. developer Ndemic Creations has officially decreed that the game's most recent expansion, The Cure, will be free on Steam until the real-life COVID-19 pandemic is 'under control,' according to an update on the game's Steam page. Plague Inc. originally launched in 2012, several years before the coronavirus first reared its ugly head. The game gives players control of a custom disease that can be mutated in order to spread and ultimately kill victims more quickly and effectively worldwide, while outsmarting government entities who are trying to subdue and eradicate it. The player wins when their illness, be it a virus, fungus, or bacterium, wipes out the global population before it can be cured.
The game was a hit on iOS and Android, and eventually was ported to PC via Steam, where it has retained considerable popularity. But in a strange case of what ultimately became life imitating art, the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe in early 2020, and during those early days of the crisis, Plague Inc.'s popularity and overall sales inexplicably skyrocketed, prompting Ndemic to take the game in a slightly less close-to-home direction.
In November 2020, Ndemic switched the game's gear with The Cure, the first new game mode since Plague Inc.'s original launch. The Cure, true to its name, took the game's original concept and turned it around, leaving players charged with finding a cure for the pandemic rather than exacerbating it. While the game mode is still about as on the nose as the original when it comes to real-world relatability, it eliminates the sinister nature of a global pandemic by instead focusing on hope rather than despair. Perhaps it's for this reason that The Cure is offered free of charge via Steam, and, as Ndemic has officially declared, will remain so for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It's a positive and much-appreciated move on the part of Ndemic, who most likely did not create Plague Inc. with the expectation that there would be an actual global pandemic happening after its release. The best part about The Cure is that it's not arbitrary pandering built by devs who have no idea what goes into handling an actual pandemic - the expansion came as a result of partnership with several health organizations around the world, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness (CEPI), and the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN).
So while Plague Inc. and The Cure are definitely still fun ways to pass the time, even if they are technically contributing to a disease of a different sort, they also educate players on just what really is necessary in order to combat a pandemic like COVID-19, and how much work goes into recovery efforts, particular on the part of front-line workers. And hopefully that'll help open eyes on what needs to be done in order to bring the cure to the real world.
Source: Steam
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