November 2022

UPDATE 7.40pm UK: After discovering the footage used in the mysterious video has been taken from an Unreal Engine 5 assets pack, it now appears that the video is a hoax.

Whilst it's unclear where the story originated - or why - for now, it's best to presume this isn't true until Konami, Virtuos, or TGA confirm otherwise. Original story follows.

ORIGINAL STORY 1pm UK: It looks like the long-rumoured Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater remake may be announced at the upcoming The Game Awards.

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A couple of weeks ago I listed off my top 13 confirmed PSVR2 games that I couldn't wait to play and, at the end of it, I wondered what people's dream PSVR 2 games would be. Some answered that question in the comments, so I took some of your suggestions, mixed them up with some of my own and created the following list of my top 11 most wanted PSVR 2 launch games! Which are listed in no particular order.

Please bear in mind that this is nothing more than my dream launch line-up for the PSVR 2. This is a wish list only so some of the games featured may not exist yet and maybe even never will at all. For this list I have also excluded PSVR 1 ports and instead gone for ports of big PC VR games that have previously been unplayable on Sony's original headset.

Blood and Truth was a cracker and easily one of my favourite games on the PSVR. It's a fast-paced James Bond simulator that allowed you to roleplay as a soldier in a warzone, a cockney gangster literally riding shotgun in a sports car and even some kind of parkour hitman, dodging machine gun fire from a helicopter as you leg it across the floors of a barely built block of flats before they explode behind you.

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Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 developer Infinity Ward has disabled attachment tuning following reports of a crash that occurs when players have five attachments tuned.

In a tweet, IW said it was disabling the feature "until further notice" and advised anyone with a tuned attachment to unequip and reequip to continue playing the newly-launched shooter.

"We are disabling attachment tuning until further notice to investigate crashes for users with 5 attachments tuned," Infinite Ward announced on social media.

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Hideo Kojima has posted a tribute to Ryan Karazija, the lead singer and founder of Low Roar whose work many of us know from Kojima's atmospheric Death Stranding soundtrack.

Karazija died over the weekend at just 40 years old "after a short illness" due to complications from pneumonia.

"I heard the news. I can't believe it. I don't want to believe it," Kojima tweeted.

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Sony Santa Monica's Cory Barlog has apologised that fans have to "dodge the spoilers" after retailers broke the "street date" for its highly-anticipated sequel, God of War Ragnarök.

Sony's exclusive is out on 9th November, but it seems players have got their hands on it early and are sharing screenshots online, as well as spoilers about the game's key story beats.

"You know, right now, I can really understand the benefit of having just an installer on the physical disc. smh", Barlog tweeted overnight.

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The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is a game that has stuck with me for a long time. I've never entirely known why. When I imagine playing Majora's Mask, I don't sense the buttons of the controller beneath my fingers or picture the light moving across the screen. I'm enveloped in an atmosphere - a feeling of some kind. As is the case with the game's predecessor, Ocarina of Time, I think this is partially due to the game's wonderful sound design.

Majora's Mask picks up the story of Link after the events of Ocarina of Time. Link is ambushed wandering through a forest, where a creature named Skull Kid and its two accomplices steal his horse and ocarina. After giving chase, Link is transformed into the body of a Deku. Crucially, while these events play out on the screen quite literally, they don't always feel literally true. Majora's Mask actually feels more like folklore: I can't really take the events of the game at its word, but rather watch as the game moves between the real world of the narrative and something else. Maybe it's a story, passed from generation to generation - each iteration meaning something different and personal to those who repeat it.

To put it another way, things don't quite make sense in Majora's Mask. After following the Skull Kid, Link falls down a huge ravine, filled with trippy visuals, before arriving in the landscape where the real adventure will take place. Some have interpreted this as the death of Link or the representation of his grief and trauma at Ganon's hands in his previous adventure, but I'm happy not to know. When it comes to folklore, after all, you never really know where the truth fully lies.

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Another day, another Steam concurrent user record broken. This time, it comes just days after Steam hit 30m concurrent players and sees Valve's PC gaming client clock up a giant 30,049,264 simultaneous players.

That said, whilst that figure comes from SteamDB, Steam itself states the all-time peak is a more modest 30,044,046. In either case, though, it's proof that PC gaming remains on the rise, even if the majority of those players were idling at the time (SteamDB estimates "just" 8.9 million were actively in-game at the time the record was set).

Steam numbers have been rising since the pandemic began in 2020, with a previous previous peak of just under 30 million set back in March this year.

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Luminous Productions has kicked off an all-new behind-the-scenes series for its upcoming action-PRG, Forspoken.

The first of a three-part series, "Magic Parkour" focuses on protagonist Frey Holland and - predictably enough - her "magic-enhanced parkour" and traversal skills. We also get to see "the variety of spells at her disposal giving players a taste of what to expect when the game launches". You can check it out below:

The next video - slated to drop on 3rd November - will focus more on Forspoken's combat "and dive into the fundamentals of Frey's magical combat skills" by sharing more about the types of magic, attacks, and upgrades we'll be able to unlock. The final video, out 10th November, showcases the quests, challenges and activities players will "find and accomplish" in the world of Athia.

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In a financial report that confirmed Square Enix has "set new records for full-year net sales", the Japanese company says it wants to "enhance [its] presence in the global market" given the "graying demographics" for developing games primarily for the Japanese market.

In the statement, Square Enix said it was "critical for [its] business that [it] produce hit titles that speak to the global market".

"For our Group to better focus on developing titles for the global market in this changing environment, we need to concentrate our limited resources on the development of strong and robust titles," the company said.

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UPDATE (Sun 30th October): Infinity Ward has confirmed the update is now live.

"Players in parties should see significant improvement," the studio said in a brief update on social media.

Original story follows.

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Lost Ark's Mystics and Mayhem update is now live.

The event - just-oh-so-coincidentally releasing ahead of Halloween - "celebrates Autumn and the scary season", boasting new costumes, enemies, a new Harvest Festival event, and three new raids: Mystic Abyss, Vykas Legion, and and Achates Trial Guardian.

The former, Abyss, is available for character level 1302+ and will run until 16th November, whilst Bykas Legion's Inferno difficulty requires a level of 1460.

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Modern Warfare 2's ping system has seemingly been disabled in an attempt to control "wall-hack" cheaters.

Within hours of reports that a ping bug on your death screen could let you track a single player for the rest of the game surfaced, developer Infinity Ward quietly disabled the ping system.

"Huge Bug: You can Ping an enemy during the death screen and the Ping lasts for the whole game, essentially giving you wallhacks on that one player for the remainder of the game," reported u/zFStatic.

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Hello! With Halloween on the way we thought it would be cool to collect a few of our favourite terrifying game experiences and share them in one place.

Please treat this like a spooky What We've Been Playing, and share your own memories in the comments! And have a lovely, spooky, safe Halloween.

I think I have to come to terms with the fact that Tomb Raider 2 is secretly my favourite game. I keep coming back to it for pieces like this, or when asked to think about the best individual elements in games.

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Sega's biggest franchise, Sonic the Hedgehog, has topped 1.5 billion sales.

As spotted by our sister site, GamesIndustry.biz, the Japanese megacorp confirmed in its most recent financial report that that figure includes all premium sales and free-to-play downloads since the franchise was born in 1991.

Interestingly, Sega Sammy Holdings also revealed sales of its other key franchises, too. In 22 years, Total War has amassed an impressive 40.4 million units sold, Football Manager and Chain Chronicles have each sold 25 million copies, whilst the fan-favourite Persona series has sold 15.5 million units since 1996, with Persona 5 alone selling 7.22 million copies globally.

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Uncharted and The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog is working with a number of other PlayStation Studios teams to develop a mysterious new project in a "beloved franchise".

That's according to a newly spotted Sony job listing (thanks VGC) seeking a game design intern to work at a "new PlayStation studio based in San Diego... co-developing an exciting new project with Naughty Dog in a beloved franchise." There's no additional information about the new studio, but it seems highly likely it's the same San-Diego-based "new internal game develop team" Sony referenced in a different job listing earlier this week.

That earlier job advert initially revealed the new team was being built to collaborate on a new "high visibility" project with Naughty Dog and Visual Arts - Sony's San-Diego-based support studio that most recently worked with Naughty Dog on its The Last of Us: Part 1 remake. However, a later edit removed the explicit reference to Visual Arts, for reasons unknown.

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Warframe's ambitious The Duviri Paradox expansion has been delayed into 2023 - but there're still a couple of treats heading to the free-to-play sci-fi shooter before the end of the year, including a mini prequel going by the name of Lua's Prey.

The Duviri Paradox is Warframe's latest open-world expansion - following the likes of Plains of Eidolon and Heart of Deimos - and plunges players into the extremely weird world of Duviri, a fantasy-western-themed kingdom existing inside the mind of new big bad Dominus Thrax. More striking, though - and there's a lot of eye-catching stuff, from its stark black and white aesthetic to its skeletal horse steed - is its new rewind-on-death mechanic that sees developer Digital Extremes "flirting with rogue-like elements".

It's intriguing stuff then, but while The Duviri Paradox was initially due to launch some time in "winter 2022", Digital Extremes has now confirmed it's pushing the expansion's release back into 2023. The studio didn't offer much on the reason behind the delay, only saying it was "to deliver the best experience possible."

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Firaxis' Marvel-themed strategy game Midnight Suns will be adding the likes of Venom, Morbius, and Storm as paid DLC starting in early 2023.

Marvel's Midnight Suns, if you're unfamiliar, draws inspiration from the Midnight Sons comic book run of the mid-90s to deliver a superhero strategy game blending turn-based combat, card-battling, and Fire-Emblem-style relationship building. At launch on 2nd December, it'll include 12 playable heroes, ranging from the immediately familiar - think the Avengers and X-Men - to perhaps lesser-known characters from the likes of the Runaways.

However, publisher 2K has now confirmed Midnight Suns' roster will begin to expand in early 2023, when Deadpool joins the line-up as premium DLC. Deadpool arrives in the first of four planned DLC packs - all included in a season pass or available to purchase individually - with each one adding a new hero (plus their respective abilities), new story missions, upgrades for the Abbey, plus new skins and outfits.

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Ambition is a word you'll hear often in the world of video games, implying a lofty goal designed to exceed expectations - an attempt to reach for the moon, so to speak, and, in the case of Bayonetta 3, it's certainly an apt descriptor. However, projects with lofty ambitions often fall short and that too is true of PlatinumGames' latest.

Let me make this clear - Bayonetta 3 is a fantastic action game and one that should satisfy fans of the series. Its bombastic set pieces, varied stage design and wildly out of control storytelling all work in tandem to create something uniquely special. However, the game also reveals an aging technology base that crumbles under the weight of its scope and scale. This is a game where it feels as if the entire production is in search of more powerful hardware that has never arrived.

After playing the latest game, I've been thinking of its beginnings. The original Bayonetta is fast, fluid and bursting with ideas. It was never a technical masterpiece but, for its day, it was a beautiful game. Years later, we were treated to the majesty of Bayonetta 2 - first on Wii U then on Nintendo Switch. Bayonetta 2 feels like a logical next step both gameplay-wise and visually. Again, it's not cutting-edge, but it feels well situated within the context of its target platform. For me, Bayonetta 3 fails to meet the realistic expectations set by the first two titles in the series.

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Sega is aiming to create a "Super Game" by the fiscal year ending March 2026.

That's according to the company's latest report, which lays out its medium-term plan.

It's not clear exactly what this "Super Game" could be, but Sega has high hopes for its existing and past IPs, including Sonic.

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Xbox has announced its next round of Games with Gold for November.

Two games will be available on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S: Praetorians - HD Remaster and Dead End Job.

Xbox Live Gold members and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members will have exclusive access to both of these games for a limited time, in addition to the usual benefits.

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PlayStation's full integration of Discord will reportedly happen in March next year.

Mentions of connecting to PlayStation Network accounts were spotted in the mobile app for Discord last week, which suggested the integration would be happening soon.

However, sources speaking to Insider Gaming stated they expect the integration to be included as part of the PS5's 7.00 system update, which is currently scheduled for 8th March.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's Grand Prix-inspired multiplayer map makes a return in the game's release build, after being mysteriously wiped from social media following its announcement earlier this year.

The map, initially called Marina Bay Grand Prix, was announced back in August during the Call of Duty (eSports) League Championship Weekend and was seemingly inspired by the Marina Bay Street Circuit in Singapore.

But in September, any mention of the map was purged from all of Call of Duty and Infinity Ward's social media accounts, as well as any trailers on its YouTube channel. The map was also missing during the multiplayer open beta.

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Physical copies of the first Bayonetta game will be "restocked later this year" on the Nintendo Store after selling out almost instantly.

The game originally arrived on Switch in digital form only accompanying Bayonetta 2, but a physical edition was promised this year exclusive to the Nintendo Store.

This was then delayed from September to the "first half of October", but fans criticised the inability to pre-order in advance.

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One dedicated Fallout fan has created their own, playable, version of Bethesda's games out of Lego.

Made by ThrillDaWill (via PCGamesN), this project, known as L3go Fallout, is truly a sight to behold. It comes with its own character creator and, of course, a wasteland to explore.

In ThrillDaWill's words: "This fan-made project combines two of the best things! Stepping on legos with your bare feet, and endless bugs and glitches!!"

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OlliOlli World's last DLC brought in aliens and anti-gravity beams and made me think of the Mario Galaxy games, particularly in the way that its levels seemed to push at the edges of what a platforming or skating level could be. These were high-wire acts, some of them dauntingly sparse. And yet once you came to understand what was demanded of you, there turned out to be ample room for showboating, points-hording, and self-expression, the last element being the thing that OlliOlli World is really all about.

The new DLC made me think of Mario too, but a much earlier incarnation. I can still remember the time I reached Sky Land, or World 5, in Super Mario 3. I explored the map and then swooped up into the air, where I found the second half of the world's challenges nestled within clouds.

This is Finding the Flowzone. It takes OlliOlli World and thrusts you up into the clouds. There's even a new overworld map that sits above the original one. I absolutely believe that some kind of folk memory of Mario 3 was in play when this all came together. It feels new and exciting, but it also feels like coming home. Flowzone - spoilers - is completely rad.

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Hitman 3's roguelike mode Freelancer has been unveiled in a new video from IO Interactive.

The mode is set for release on 26th January next year, though a closed technical test will begin from 3rd November until 7th November - details are on the latest IOI blog.

The developer has released an in-depth video detailing exactly how the gameplay of Freelancer works, check it out below.

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Microsoft has missed its growth target for Xbox Game Pass for the second year in a row.

Earlier this week, the company shared its latest financial results, including a hardware revenue growth of 13 percent and PC Game Pass subscriptions increasing by 159 percent year on year.

However, that still wasn't enough to meet Microsoft's targets, according to a new financial filing (reported by Axios).

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has launched with one multiplayer map conspicuously missing.

Valderas Museum, set in Spain, was playable during the multiplayer open beta but has been removed from the final game.

Activision declined to comment when asked about its removal.

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Earlier this week, Warner Bros. Montréal released a PC patch for Gotham Knights.

However, in doing so, it reportedly also removed Denuvo - the game's anti-piracy software - by accident.

While the developer has allegedly now reinstated this software, this slip-up left Gotham Knights free for hackers to, well, hack for a period of time (via Reddit).

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A 75-year-old man and his son were found guilty of third-degree assault earlier this week by a jury in St. Louis, Missouri.

The reason for the tussle? Pokémon Go.

The incident took place in 2018 at Kirkwood Park, more specifically Walter Lake, when Robert Matteuzzi was 71 and his son, Angelo, was 31.

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Call of Duty fans are spending £30 on codes for an in-game Burger King skin.

The fast food chain is currently running a promotion where a Call of Duty meal can be bought, offering a free in-game Operator Skin (a t-shirt of the fictional Burger Town) and one hour of double xp for Modern Warfare 2.

Codes for these in-game extras are now being sold on eBay, with most sold listings ranging from around £20 to £40 and (amusingly) not always including postage. Some are even higher.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 does not have an exclusive game mode for PlayStation owners, in contrast to the last game in the series.

As part of Sony's agreement with Activision, Call of Duty games since 2015 had exclusive content for PlayStation owners, including game modes.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) had a timed exclusive survival mode in Spec Ops, while Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War had an exclusive Zombies mode called Onslaught.

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Modern Warfare 2 had its full release today, and it has already trounced all other Call of Duty releases on Steam.

At the time of writing, there are currently 154,297 players battling it out with Captain Price and co (via SteamDB).

Meanwhile, the game's current all-time player peak is sitting at a lofty 238,522 after just a few hours. It's currently the fifth most played game on Steam, behind the perennial Counter-Strike, Dota 2, PUBG: Battlegrounds, and Apex Legends.

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Xbox and PC players have found their ability to disable crossplay in Modern Warfare 2 has disappeared.

The crossplay toggle allows players to choose whether they matchmake with players from other platforms.

Console players tend to disable crossplay to avoid matching against PC players using keyboard and mouse or may be hacking. On the flip side, PC players may wish to avoid console players who have aim assist.

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Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've found ourselves playing over the last few days. This time: bricks, dungeons, and cards.

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.

I've been itching to play Lego Bricktales ever since I read Tom's review: a Lego game in which you actually use Lego bricks to make things! Solve problems, build bridges and vehicles and all sorts. And then your jumbled solutions appear in the world. Nice.

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Frontier has announced it is ending post-launch support for its inaugural F1 Manager sim less than two months after release, saying its next patch will be the game's last major update as it moves staff elsewhere to "ensure upcoming F1 Manager projects realise their potential".

F1 Manager 2022, which launched at the end of August, is the first of four games planned for release under Frontier's new F1 licensing deal. It put players in the role of a team principal, challenging them to lead their "drivers, engineers and fans to glory in the 2022 FIA Formula 1 Drivers' World Championship and FIA Formula 1 Constructors' World Championship".

While F1 Manager 2022 received a decent critical reception at launch, it's drawn criticism among players for shallow, undercooked features and a significant number of bugs. Many had hoped at least some of these issues would be properly addressed through robust post-launch support, but Frontier has now called time on further development.

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It's all looking a bit Sonic the Hedgehog as the year nears its end; not only does the blue streak make his video game return next month in Sonic Frontiers, Netflix has confirmed its 3D animated series Sonic Prime is hitting the streaming service on Thursday, 15th December.

Sonic Prime was announced last February, after a bit of a premature reveal toward the end of 2020, with Netflix promising a 24-episode series that would send Sonic on a "journey of self-discovery and redemption" in which the "fate of a strange new multiverse" was in his hands.

Since then, we've had teases, plus a slightly more revealing 40-second trailer, confirming appearance from Shadow, Dr. Eggman, and Big the Cat - who appears to be having something of a renaissance this year, seeing as he's also been sighted in Sonic Frontiers.

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Gotham Knight's performance woes on consoles continue to cause controversy, with many worried that it's the first title to signal a resurgence in 30fps gaming for the latest console hardware. The PC version - with its adjustable settings, hardware monitoring and the ability to switch out hardware - allows us to pick apart the issues, separate them, and get a better idea of what what makes this game tick. In doing so, we should be able to answer why frame-rates are capped at 30fps on consoles. The bottom line is that this game has severe CPU utilisation problems that almost certainly affect the PS5 and Xbox Series builds too, while the PC version has additional issues exclusive to that platform.

We tested the title on two different PCs - the first is our usual mid-spec gaming rig, based on the ever-popular Ryzen 5 3600 paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super and 3200MT/s low latency DDR4, the other featuring best-in-class components - a Core i9 12900K paired with fast 6000MT/s DDR5 and an RTX 4090. The Ryzen is especially interesting as there are similarities in CPU architecture with the CPU clusters found within PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles. In all reasonable scenarios, we seem to be CPU-limited on both systems when frame-rate is unlocked, severely limiting scalability and bringing the ceiling crashing down on overall performance.

Five years after developer Jumpship formally unveiled its side-scrolling sci-fi apocalypse adventure Somerville, a release is in sight, with the studio having somewhat unexpectedly announced a 15th November launch on Xbox One and PC earlier today.

Jumpship is an independent studio founded by film animator Chris Olsen in collaboration with Dino Patti, co-founder and former CEO of Limbo studio Playdead. And while Somerville's formal reveal came in 2017, Olsen - who has worked the likes of Skyfall and The Avengers 2: Age of Ultron - had already been tinkering away on the project for three years before that.

Somerville - described as a "hand-crafted narrative experience set across a vivid rural landscape" that sees players navigating perilous terrain "to unravel the mysteries of Earth's visitors" - has continued to look wonderfully intriguing since its big reveal. However, it's been nearly a year since its most recent public showing.

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EA has confirmed it won't be stopping distribution of physical products across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Reports have emerged that EA would no longer distribute physical games in German-speaking countries, according to its latest annual report.

However, it seems this was misinterpreted as EA confirms this is incorrect.

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