Assassin's Creed fans were left stunned last year when Xbox, seemingly accidentally, said Mirage would have "real gambling". This was quickly removed, however, with Ubisoft promptly reassuring fans that there would be no gambling or loot boxes in Mirage, despite what the listing said. Now, for some reason, the note about gambling is back.
On both the US and UK store pages for Assassin's Creed Mirage, Xbox says it will include: "Real Gambling" and/or "Paid Contests." This is despite many reports stating that this note had been removed, suggesting that it had recently been re-added to the listing. It's not clear if this is another mistake, or if this is in response to more details about the game being shared with Xbox.
On the US store and UK store, both the standard and deluxe editions of Assassin's Creed Mirage claim to feature "real gambling". Since the UK is under the same regulatory body as the rest of Europe, EU countries also seem to carry this warning, such as Ireland.
There are very few archives of the store pages online, but it was first spotted by fans yesterday and shared on the Assassin's Creed subreddit. Here, most fans are optimistic that this note was placed in error yet again, especially since this is only appearing on the Xbox store.
The PlayStation store doesn't have any mention of real gambling in Mirage, but it does say that there will be "optional" in-game purchases. Something that most of us have come to expect from triple-A releases at this point.
It's worth mentioning that Assassin's Creed Mirage still doesn't appear on the ESRB and PEGI websites, so it's hard to tell if the game will have real gambling or not. When these fears first spread last September, the Xbox store also claimed that Mirage had been rated "Adults Only" in North America - a rating that typically means that brick-and-mortar stores won't sell the game. This would be pretty extreme, and hardly the situation Ubisoft would like to find itself in. Even the GTA series has done all it can to avoid this rating, so it's unlikely Mirage would be released in that state.
Now, even if the note regarding real gambling has reappeared, the storefront at least makes it clear that the ESRB has not rated the game yet. Curiously, the UK store says Mirage has been given an 18+ rating from PEGI (an expected rating, not the equivalent of Adults Only in the US), but this has not been confirmed.
TheGamer has contacted Ubisoft for clarification, and we will update this report with any developments.