Month: March 2023

Artist's conception of EA taking aim at the digital storefronts hosting three legacy Battlefield games. (credit: Electronic Arts)

If you want to secure a legitimate copy of Battlefield 1943 or either of the two numbered Battlefield: Bad Company games, you only have a few weeks to purchase them from various online marketplaces. Electronic Arts announced Tuesday that it would remove the older titles from all online storefronts on April 28.

EA says the move comes as the company "shift[s] our focus towards our current and future Battlefield experiences." The announcement also cites "preparation for the retirement of the online services for these titles," currently set for December 8.

But the server shutdown argument doesn't fully explain the delisting of the Battlefield: Bad Company games, which both include single-player campaigns that don't require any server resources on EA's part. Our 2008 review of the original title specifically called out the "strong" single-player campaign and its "colorful characters with a high level of witty banter." Players that buy the Bad Company games before the April delisting will still be able to enjoy all offline features, EA said.

Enlarge / Security guards stand in front of the closed Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the city of Wuhan, in the Hubei Province, on January 11, 2020, where the Wuhan health commission said that the man who died from a respiratory illness had purchased goods. (credit: Getty | NOEL CELIS)

A group of independent, international researchers has released its full analysis of newly uncovered metagenomic data collected by the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in January and February of 2020. The data closely links SARS-CoV-2 to the genetic tracks of wild animals, particularly raccoon dogs, sold at the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, the group's analysis says.

The full analysis provides additional, compelling evidence that the pandemic coronavirus made its leap to humans through a natural spillover, with a wild animal at the market acting as an intermediate host between the virus' natural reservoir in horseshoe bats and humans. It was authored by 19 scientists, led by Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona; Kristian Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in California; and Florence Débarre, a theoretician who specializes in evolutionary biology at France's national research agency, CNRS.

Prior to the release of the full analysis late Monday, information on the findings was only made public through media reports and statements from the World Health Organization, which was briefed on the analysis last week. But, the raw metagenomic data behind the analysis is still not publicly available. It was briefly posted on a public genetic database called the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID) as recently as earlier this month, and the international researchers were able to download it during that window of availability. But, administrators for the database quickly removed the data after its discovery, saying the removal was at the request of the submitter, a researcher at China CDC.