UPDATE: BT Games has announced that Resident Evil 3 Remake and Persona 5 Royal will be released a week early

UPDATE: BT Games have released an apology regarding the newsletter emailed yesterday. The Resident Evil 3 Remake will not be launching today and is still expected to be released on 3 April, the original release date. Clearly someone was either a little confused or just a tad spooked about the whole lockdown thing.

Both the Resident Evil 3 Remake and Persona 5 Royal is slated to only release in early April but given the situation around the lockdown of South Africa on Thursday, BT Games wants to ensure that players can get their hands on physical copies of the two highly anticipated games much sooner than expected.

Sure, video games aren’t exactly priority shopping, an activity which has become very popular in South Africa since the announcement that the country will be going into lockdown as soon as Thursday 26 March.

While most people will be stocking up on food and toiletries (which you don’t need to hoard and stockpile, just relax, you’ll be fine), BT Games wants to ensure that gamers still have the latest releases to keep them occupied. So much so that they’re breaking the on-street date on two of the year’s most anticipated titles.

Announced in an email sent out by BT Games, Resident Evil 3 Remake and Persona 5 Royal will be available for purchase as early as tomorrow, Wednesday 25 March. While Persona 5 Royal was only meant to launch on 31 March, RE 3 Remake will be sold a whole 9 days before the international release date.

What this means is that for the first time maybe ever, South Africa will have access to one of the year’s big releases before anyone else, which is both a little exciting and super weird. Obviously video games should not be the thing you’re most concerned about at this time but it’s still interesting to see BT Games breaking the street date so early.