Eurogamer

Twitter users are using the platform's new Elon Musk era changes to impersonate official video game companies.

For a small fee, anyone can now pay up and receive a blue Twitter verified tick next to their name. So, of course, people are handing over their $8 specifically in order to trick others online.

A verified "Nintendo of America" account went viral last night as it posted an image of the company's mascot Mario giving the middle finger. The handle, @nIntendoofus, has now had their account suspended - but not until their tweets had been widely shared.

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My favourite remakes tend to be a little disrespectful towards the games they're remaking, engaging in mildly subversive dialogue with the old creative choices, rather than just trying to 'improve' them in accordance with the expectations of the day. As such, my pick of Tactics Ogre: Reborn's new features is a rebellious flourish - the buff card system, a cousin of the returning Tarot cards from the original 1995 launch on SNES.

It works like this: power-up cards for critical chance, physical or magic stats and the odds of triggering each unit's passive abilities spawn semi-randomly across each isometric map, as you take turns to move your troops. Each of your units can gather up to four cards, keeping the effects till the battle is over (Tarot cards, dropped infrequently by dying enemies, confer permanent boosts). It's tempting to ignore these buffs when they materialise off the beaten path, appearing on squares that don't fit into your strategy, but they can be decisive in letting you temporarily override level gaps or class disadvantages.

Take ninjas. They've got some sexy kit - blowpipes with which to mute or petrify troublesome Wizards, the ability to strike twice with a weapon in each hand - but they also struggle to make a dent on tougher Warriors and Knights. So why not have your Ninja tour the perimeter while said Warriors and Knights duke it out, harvesting attack buffs before pouncing on the enemy rearguard. Better yet, try it with a beefier flying unit such as a Gryphon: they can swoop right over the frontline to chase down cards before your enemies bag them.

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Names are important when it comes to Mini Motorways. That's in part because names are important when it comes to cities. This is a game that tasks you with drawing the highway infrastructure for a series of famous cities around the world, but the whole thing is cleanly abstracted. I can recognise the abstracted Los Angeles from Mini Motorways because I've played it for so long - actually I can see it in my sleep - but it's still nice to play this map and think of the name. I'm not anywhere. I'm not nowhere. I'm back in LA.

And names are important when it comes to modes, maybe? Mini Motorways' latest update adds two new modes to the game. The first is Endless, which is pretty self-explanatory. The second is Expert, which is absolutely brutal and brilliant. Excellent stuff, but for a while early on I kind of wondered if Expert might be the wrong name for it. Or, to put it another way, it's made me ponder what being really good at Mini Motorways might actually look like.

Expert mode is certainly a real challenge. The idea is quietly alarming. The first wrinkle? You get more upgrade options at the end of each week to start with, but then after eight weeks it's just road tiles. Got that? Get your roundabouts and motorways in fast. The other wrinkle is so terrifying I feel like I should whisper it: decisions are permanent. There's a touch of the exam board chill to that one. What it means is that after a short period of time - very short - every tile you place down is fixed in place forever.

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Activision has shared a whole load of information on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0's first season ahead of its arrival next Wednesday, 16th November, including details of a major battle pass overhaul.

Ditching the linear level progression still used by most games, Call of Duty's new battle pass will adopt a system reminiscent of that seen in Fortnite, where players have more freedom in which battle pass items they can unlock and when.

Activision's battle pass overhaul presents itself as a multi-sector map, with players able to unlock five items in each of its 20 sectors using earned Battle Token Tier skips. These tokens can either unlock more items within an already available sector or unlock adjacent sectors.

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20 months after developer SCS announced American Truck Simulator was setting its sights on Texas as one of its next destinations, the long-in-the-works expansion finally has a release date and is coming to Steam next Tuesday, 15th November.

Texas will be American Truck Simulator's 11th explorable state, joining California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. It was confirmed to be in development last March, but SCS warned the expansion could be a long time coming given the sheer effort required to bring one of the US' largest states into the game.

However, with Texas' arrival now less than a week away, SCS has given us our best look yet at the expansion's numerous familiar sights - its newly released launch trailer featuring the likes of Austin, Houston, and a whole lot of countryside.

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Nintendo's latest Indie World Showcase is now over, and while it might have been regrettably devoid of any new Silksong details, it did at least reveal more of Sidebar Games' long-awaited Golf Story follow-up, Sports Story - alongside the surprise reveal that it's out in December.

There's a lot more where that came from though, with Nintendo choosing to highlight over 20 promising new indie titles heading to Switch before next summer is through - a few of which, such as the wonderful Rogue Legacy 2, are out today. Read on for the full round-up!

Venba

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Disco Elysium game director Robert Kurvitz and art director Aleksander Rostov have published an explosive open letter to fans detailing their ousting from ZA/UM, the game's development studio.

Most eye-opening is the claim ZA/UM's new majority shareholder, an Estonian firm named Tütreke OÜ, allegedly obtained control of the company through fraud. Tütreke OÜ is a "vehicle" for two Estonian businessmen, the pair wrote, namely Ilmar Kompus (now ZA/UM's CEO) and Tõnis Haavel (who was previously "convicted for defrauding investors on a different matter in 2007").

At the same time, ZA/UM CEO Kompus has published, via Estonian newspaper Ekspress, allegations of mismanagement by Kurvitz and a previous minority shareholder of the company, Saandar Taal. The pair are accused of "belittling women and co-workers" and creating a "toxic environment". Kompus also states the pair had been "intending to steal IP" - namely, Disco Elysium - with an eye to departing the studio and working elsewhere.

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In prior God of War: Ragnarök coverage, we described the PlayStation 5 version of the game as akin to a maxed PC port of the PS4 code, operating with an essentially flawless level of performance. As the game launches, we wanted to expand on that with many more insights now the embargo restrictions on how much content we can show are over.

At the fundamental level, this release is a fascinating take on cross-gen development that looks beautiful and plays smoothly on PlayStation 5, while operating with a similar level of polish on PS4, albeit with lower target resolutions and frame-rates. Yes, there are cuts on the lower-spec machines but the drawbacks are not really noticeable outside of head-to-head comparisons - and the enhancements exclusive to PlayStation 5 often have a habit of becoming far less noticeable within the lower resolution window of the base PS4 especially.

The cross-gen philosophy here is entirely different than, say, Horizon Forbidden West - and that's largely down to a very different development process. In creating its vast, detail-rich open world, Guerrilla Games relies heavily on procedural generation to add detail - something that cannot be done on God of War, which is much more of an artist-driven endeavour, where this styel of programmatic enhancement simply isn't possible.

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Tales of Symphonia Remastered has a release date: 17th February 2023.

One of the most highly regarded games in the series, it originally released on the GameCube and was followed by a PS2 re-release.

This remastered version will release across PlayStation and Xbox consoles, plus Nintendo Switch. Check out a new trailer below.

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The Kingdom Hearts series is set to be playable on PlayStation Plus in its entirety.

Sony is adding a load of new games to its subscription service for Premium and Extra subscribers this November.

It also includes The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, from Microsoft-owned studio Bethesda, continuing efforts to make the game playable absolutely everywhere.

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Ten months after Bandai Namco pulled online support for its Dark Souls trilogy on PC, online services for Dark Souls Remastered - the only series entry the publisher was yet to address following its move - have finally been restored.

Servers for Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition, Dark Souls: Remastered, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin, and Dark Souls 3 were "temporarily deactivated" back in January following reports the games were vulnerable to Remote Code Execution exploits.

Several weeks later, Bandai Namco offered an update, saying the issue would't be addressed until after the release of Elden Ring, but Dark Souls fans' patience was finally rewarded in August when online features for Dark Souls 3 were restored. Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin was next to go back online in October, with the publisher promising to reactive servers for the original Dark Souls 2 at "a later date".

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Remember Saints Row? The wacky open world reboot launched at the end of August to a lukewarm response. This month, developer Volition has a big patch ready to address hundreds of issues.

This is the game's first major update which Volition previously said would be used to prioritise fixes and improvements over new content. Last month, the studio said it had chosen to spend time bringing the existing game up to scratch - even though it would have "preferred to be talking about roadmaps and expansions".

"Significant effort and testing" has gone into fixing the game's co-op, Volition said today. Connectivity, map issues and rewards should all work more smoothly post-patch.

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Ahead of its release next summer, Final Fantasy 16 has received plenty of praise for its colossal Eikon battles between mythical beasts, stunning fantasy realm, and fast-paced action full of spectacular magical effects.

But one major criticism has been the distinct lack of diversity in its main cast.

Last week, director Naoki Yoshida addressed the lack of diversity in an interview. It fits the "isolated nature of this realm" he said, as well as the inspiration of Medieval Europe.

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Nothing can stop the Pokémon Scarlet and Violet leaks - not least the dozens and dozens of Pokémon fans already turning the game's latest still-officially-unannounced creature into somewhat dubious fan art.

If you ever need reminding how popular Pokémon is, simply type one of the creatures' names into social media and see how many image results you get. This is true even for Pokémon so far only glimpsed in leaked screenshots from early copies, images of which Nintendo is busy scrubbing from the internet.

Fan art created from seeing these leaked images, though, is another matter. For example, this morning I learned the final evolution of Grass-type cat and Scarlet and Violet Starter Pokémon Sprigatito had leaked online after I saw someone on Twitter discussing its design. (And if you're still reading and want to go into the new games blind, this is your cue to head elsewhere now.)

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PC streaming via PlayStation Plus is still unavailable in many European countries, fans have told Eurogamer.

As well as streaming games to consoles, Sony's subscription service allows players to stream games on PC.

However, as a PlayStation Blog from the release in May states, PC streaming is not available in the following countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Republic of Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

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A 2D pixel art Metroidvania reimagining From Software's Dark Souls 3 was rejected by Bandai Namco.

The news comes courtesy of artist Thomas Feichtmeir who released a screenshot of artwork used in the pitch to the publisher six years ago - now, the NDA is finally up.

Feichtmeir also worked on Blasphemous, itself a Metroidvania inspired by the Dark Souls series.

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If you've ever played Destiny, you'll know of Telesto. This exotic weapon is a fan-favourite for its exploding purple projectiles - and also notorious for often being bugged.

It's broken nature is so notorious, in fact, that Destiny developer Bungie has now added an Easter egg to the game where Telesto fails to properly fire - and instead sends its projectiles floating lazily into the sky while the weapon itself fizzes and sparks. (A simple reload clears the Easter egg, and the gun can then be used as normal.)

But while this appeared at first to be just a fun nod to Telesto's oft-bugged state, fans are now suggesting the Easter egg may hint at a further secret, as Destiny 2 heads towards the end of its current season.

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Meta, the owner of Facebook and maker of Meta Quest VR headsets, will cut 11,000 jobs in a deep effort to restructure its business, boss Mark Zuckerberg announced today.

The move will see Meta's overall workforce shrink by 13 percent, with some areas of the business impacted more than others.

Specifically how this will impact the company's development of Meta Quest remains unclear, though Zuckerberg stated today that the company's "long-term vision for the metaverse" remained one of a small number of "high priority growth areas".

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Street Fighter 6 will have a new Dynamic Control Scheme that makes button mashing effective.

The option is all part of Capcom's efforts to make its forthcoming fighting game the most accessible yet.

A few simple button taps is enough to have your character performing all sorts of moves, determined dynamically by the A.I. based on character position and situation.

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A fan-made VR mod for Final Fantasy 14 will have an alpha release "soon".

The mod comes courtesy of modders Marulu and Streetrat, who previously worked on a Half Life 2 VR mod.

The mod for Final Fantasy 14 will support both first and third person, motion controls, and more.

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Football governing body FIFA has announced licenses for a list of games themed around this year's controversial World Cup in Qatar, which kicks off this month.

The move follows its break-up with long-standing FIFA game maker EA Sports - and after promises it would now use its name license elsewhere.

The list includes blockchain-based metaverse game Uplandme, for which it is launching "FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 in the Upland Metaverse". Here, players will be able to collect "official FIFA World Cup digital assets, including legendary video highlights of the tournament" and purchase FIFA items for their Upland home.

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New figures show Animal Crossing: New Horizons is now the best-selling game ever in Japan.

The previous best selling game(s) Pokémon Red/Blue/Green shifted 10,230,000 copies, and are now in second place. New Horizons has sold 10.45m.

Twitter account Game Data Library has released details of the top 20 best-selling games in the country. It's fascinating to see all but two are Nintendo titles.

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UPDATE: There was a question, following our report, about which Nintendo Switch model we used to get our results. It was an important question. We used the original launch model to get our results, but there are another two versions of Switch hardware out there: the revised 2019 model and the newer OLED model. And these significantly alter the test results; power-use has been as much as halved in the newer models.

We decided, then, to re-test all three Switch models to produce a supplementary table to the original one below. On it, you will notice a discrepancy with the original Switch figures in the "Rest mode" category. We originally told you the launch model Switch would pull 3.5W in Rest mode, and that would add up to £10.40 of electricity used a year, but that is not entirely correct.

The complication comes from Switch being the only console that charges a battery. When it's charging, it does pull 3.5W, but when it's not, it pulls hardly anything: 0.2W the majority of the time. This reduces the annual pull to £0.59 - a trace amount.

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Almost ten months after it acquired Josh Wardle's free browser-based puzzler and cultural phenomenon Wordle for an undisclosed seven-figure sum, the New York Times has announced the game is finally getting a dedicated editor.

Since launch, Wordle's puzzles have drawn from the same list of five-letter words - originally totalling 2,315, but now down by six - with a new solution being presented each day. Now, though, that list will be fully curated by Wordle's new dedicated editor, Tracy Bennett.

"Wordle's gameplay will stay the same," the publication explains in its announcement, "and answers will be drawn from the same basic dictionary of answer words". However, Bennett will be responsible for making "some editorial adjustments to ensure that the game stays focused on vocabulary that's fun, accessible, lively and varied."

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Halo Infinite's long-awaited Winter Update - which developer 343 Industries calls the game's 'largest feature update yet' - is now live on Xbox and PC, introducing campaign network co-op, the official launch of The Forge beta, and more.

343 has provided extended release notes on its website, but the key additions start with the aforementioned campaign network co-op, making it possible for up to four players to experience Halo Infinite's campaign together. Crossplay between PC and Xbox devices is supported, and progress and unlocks are shared across all players, not just the host.

To accompanying the arrival of campaign co-op, the developer has added 24 new achievements, many of which will require collaboration to complete.

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The European Commission has announced that, following its initial investigation into Microsoft's proposed $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard, it will now be opening a more "in-depth" Phase 2 probe to determine the deal's likely impact on competition.

In a statement on its website, the European Commission said it had made the decision after its preliminary investigation showed Microsoft's acquisition may "significantly reduce competition on the markets for the distribution of console and PC video games, including multi-game subscription services and/or cloud game streaming services, and for PC operating systems".

It drew particular attention to its concerns Microsoft has a "potential economic incentive" to prevent competitors from accessing Activision Blizzard's "high-profile and highly successful games" upon closure of the deal, specifically highlighting the Call of Duty series - something Microsoft has repeatedly insisted it will not do.

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With Awesome Games Done Quick's next charity speedrun event rapidly gaining on us, organisers have revealed timings for all 140+ speedruns scheduled for the January 2023 show.

Next year's Awesome Games Done Quick runs from 8th-15th January, and will once again be an online-only event as organisers look to move its in-person component away from its usual haunt of Florida. Earlier this year, organisers said the state's "continued disregard for COVID-19's dangers... and an increased aggression towards LGBTQ+ individuals" made it impossible to provide a "safe and welcoming" event for all.

While the lack of an in-person event might be a disappointment for some, Awesome Games Done Quick 2023 will still feature an extensive speedrunning schedule, running 24 hours everyday across the week with an occasional pauses for breaks. As ever, it's an eclectic line-up - covering triple-A titles, smaller-scale indie offerings, retro classics, and other assorted oddities (I can't pretend I'm not immediately intrigued by a game called Salamander County Public Television) - and you can have a leisurely peruse on the Games Done Quick website.

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Plans are reportedly afoot for an MMO set in Sony's Horizon IP.

This project is reported to be in development with Korean Studio NCsoft, which is most famous for publishing the MMORPG Guild Wars and its subsequent sequel.

A source familiar with both Sony and NCsoft reportedly told Korean news site MTN the two companies have "tentatively agreed to pursue a business partnership in which NC will create new games using Sony's promising game IP".

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Cities: Skylines is doing a spot of jet-setting, with publisher Paradox Interactive having announced a geographically inspired set of 10 DLC releases it's calling World Tour, which'll include the new Financial Districts "mini-expansion" later this year.

The tour begins next Tuesday, 15th November, with five bits of DLC - two Content Creator Packs (each costing £4.79/$5.99 USD/€5.99), two radio stations (priced at £2.89/$3.99 USD/€3.99 each), and a free update. The first of these, the Heart of Korea Content Creator Pack, adds 60 assets - including service buildings and unique structures - inspired by South Korean cities. It arrives alongside the K-Pop Radio Station DLC.

Cities: Skylines players can also pick up the Skyscrapers Content Creator Pack on the same day, featuring 15 skyscrapers inspired by iconic buildings around the world. This one's twinned with the separate 80's Downtown Beat Radio Station DLC.

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Activision Blizzard revealed Overwatch 2 has proved very popular since its release on 4th October.

After 10 days, Overwatch 2 had 25 million players. Thanks to Activision Blizzard's third quarter financial report, we know that the game had 35 million players in its first month.

The report goes on to state the daily average number of players for Overwatch 2's first month are "more than double" the number the first Overwatch saw in the same period.

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On Death Stranding's third anniversary, Kojima Productions is celebrating its latest milestone.

Since its launch, over 10 million players (or Porters) have set foot in Hideo Kojima's apocalyptic version of the United States and taken on the role of courier Sam Bridges.

These latest figures take into account all platforms the game is available on, as well as those users that played through subscription services.

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Today brings our final big information dollop for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet ahead of their release next week - and our first look at a feature in the game which has remained under wraps until now.

Each game will feature a separate book of expedition records with rare Pokémon to track down, letting you retrace their steps to encounter them yourselves. However, it sounds like the Scarlet Book and the Violet Book will feature alternate versions of these Pokémon, depending on which version of the upcoming games you have.

Put more simply: today's trailer appears to show a pair of new evolutions for Donphan. One is primal looking with huge tusks, which you'll meet in Scarlet. One is futuristic-looking with dot-matrix eyes, which you'll meet in Violet.

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Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR and creator of the Oculus Rift, has designed a new VR headset to celebrate the popular light novel and anime series Sword Art Online which can also kill you.

The plot of Sword Art Online revolves around a massive multiplayer online role-playing game in VR, which is played using a headset called the NerveGear. A number of players get locked into the game and the NerveGear can't be removed whilst a player is still online. And (spoiler alert) it'll kill a player in real-life if they die in the game.

Luckey revealed his own version of this headset, named the OQPNVG, in a blog post on 6th November, to coincide with the day the events of Sword Art Online begin. (@SAO_IRL on Twitter is dedicated to broadcasting the events of the series as if it was actually happening, if a murder headset isn't enough realism for you.)

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Ahead of its release tomorrow, Sony Santa Monica has shared the first set of patch notes for God of War Ragnarök.

There are a myriad of fixes addressed in this day one patch, ranging from the UI to the combat.

Some of the fixes detailed within this update from the developer include a variety of quest, creature, and ability names. Therefore, if you are keen to avoid as many potential spoilers as possible, I would advise not reading the full notes. However, Sony Santa Monica "strongly" encourages everyone to download this patch before playing the game.

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Citizens of Cyberpunk 2077's Night City will soon carry umbrellas "in various colours and shapes", developer CD Projekt Red has revealed. Well, it is autumn, after all.

The change is one of dozens detailed in Cyberpunk 2077's patch notes for Update 1.61, which is now rolling out to PC, consoles and even Stadia.

This update is mostly centred around fixing bugs in the game - such as issues with Xbox saves not transferring properly to PC and PlayStation, plus an issue on PC where the game's frame rate would drop after exiting a menu.

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Capcom's hugely successful Monster Hunter series is taking another stab at the mobile market courtesy of a newly announced partnership with Tencent.

More specifically, the project is a collaboration between Capcom and Timi Studio Group - the Tencent-owned developer behind the likes of Call of Duty mobile, Pokemon Unite, and Arena of Valor - and promises to "reproduce the hunting actions that define the Monster Hunter series" for mobile devices and phones.

"This first-time partnership between TiMi and Capcom will combine the experience and strengths of both sides," reads the press release announcing the news, "allowing Monster Hunter to scale to more platforms with an aim to give global hunters - experienced or new - the freedom to hunt as they desire, anytime and anywhere."

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Slightly Mad Studios' Project Cars is no more, it has been revealed, with EA confirming its decision to "stop further development and investment" in the racing series.

The news was revealed by our partner site GamesIndustry.biz, and it sees an end to a series that debuted in 2015 - though one whose roots go back much further as a crowdfunded project brought to life by its community.

Bandai Namco went on to publish the first three games in the series, with Project Cars 3 releasing in 2020 - several months after EA had acquired Slightly Mad Studios as part of its takeover of Codemasters.

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Let's take a moment to mark the passing of another set of driving games - delisted from sale due to the expiry of in-game car licenses.

The past two months have seen both Project Cars and Project Cars 2 disappear forever. The first game lasted longer - slightly - until 3rd October. Project Cars 2 was removed from sale on 21st September.

In a statement posted to Twitter, developer Slightly Mad Studios blamed "expiring car and track licenses", but said existing owners would still be able to play both games, and multiplayer servers would remain available.

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Take-Two has delivered its latest financial report, and revealed that Grand Theft Auto 5 only shipped around 1m units this quarter.

While this may still seem an impressive figure, it is a marked decrease from previous quarters and the lowest quarter in shipments that Grand Theft Auto 5 has had since its release in 2013. For comparison, in February of this year, the publisher shared it had sold 5m copies between then and the previous November.

Even with this slow down in sales, the publisher stated the game has now sold more than 170m units worldwide.

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Even more evidence of a PC release of PS5 exclusive Returnal has emerged, further cementing its long-rumoured existence.

In May, the first signs of a PC release popped up on SteamDB, under the name Oregon. In September, what appeared to be footage of Returnal running on a PC dev kit was spotted by Digital Foundry's Alex Battaglia during a GDC talk.

The most recent evidence of a PC port comes from the Oregon listing on SteamDB.

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