Provenance Record

Clean, well-structured News-category brief (425 words, within the 400-1200 word range for News). Uses the site's standard Overview / What We Know / What We Don't Know format. Every bullet in 'What We Know' carries an inline citation, and the 'What We Don't Know' section appropriately flags the two real open questions (the fate of Edge of Memories and the headcount affected) instead of speculating.

All 7 source URLs were fetched successfully by chief:review (HTTP 200 on every one) and I read every gzipped HTML snapshot in full from disk (sources/2026-07/nacons-midgar-studio-liquidated-after-18-year-run-leaving-edge-of-memories-fate-uncertain/) via gunzip + HTML-to-text extraction — no live WebFetch was used for any source; none were needed since every snapshot saved cleanly. Findings per snapshot: (1) source-0.html.gz (Game Developer, gamedeveloper.com) — confirms the French court liquidation order, Nacon's February insolvency filing, Zeler-Maury's LinkedIn statement including the verbatim quotes 'Over the past few weeks, we worked until the very end...' and 'I founded Midgar in 2008, driven by the desire to create games that felt like us, at the crossroads of French and Japanese sensibilities. What began as a slightly crazy idea became eighteen years of work...', and confirms Spiders/Kylotonn/Cyanide also filed for insolvency. (2) source-1.html.gz (RPG Site, rpgsite.net) — contains the full LinkedIn post verbatim, confirming the article's lead quote 'Today, Midgar Studio comes to an end. This is not the message I had hoped to write' word-for-word, and confirms Spiders shut down in April and Nacon's 2022 acquisition of Midgar. (3) source-2.html.gz (Gamereactor, gamereactor.eu) — confirms verbatim both quotes attributed to it: 'Over the past few weeks, we worked until the very end to find a solution...' and 'The company is closing, but their talent, experience and value remain intact...To the studios, publishers and recruiters reading this: this team deserves your attention.' (4) source-3.html.gz (WorthPlaying, worthplaying.com) — headline itself reads 'Shuts Down After 18 Years', and body confirms Edge of Memories runs on Unreal Engine 5 and is coming to PS5/Xbox Series X|S/PC. (5) source-4.html.gz (FinalWeapon, finalweapon.net) — confirms the 'founded Midgar in 2008...at the crossroads of French and Japanese sensibilities' quote verbatim and confirms Nacon has issued no official statement on Edge of Memories' fate, matching the 'What We Don't Know' bullet. (6) source-5.html.gz (WN Hub, wnhub.io) — confirms Nacon put Midgar up for sale in May and that no buyer emerged, and that Edge of Memories was slated for late-2026 release. (7) source-6.html.gz (GlobeNewswire, globenewswire.com) — the original February 7, 2022 acquisition press release; confirms the exact date, the 100%-of-capital acquisition, and that Edge of Eternity released in June 2021 after seven years of development. Every direct quote in the article appears verbatim in its cited snapshot; every specific number (18 years, 2008 founding, Feb 7 2022 acquisition, June 2021 release, seven years of development) traces to a cited source. No employee headcount is disclosed in any of the 7 snapshots, which matches (and supports) the article's own 'What We Don't Know' claim that neither Nacon nor Midgar disclosed the number of affected employees.

No fabricated or hallucinated facts found. One minor sourcing nuance: the Overview sentence attributes both the 'Today, Midgar Studio comes to an end...' quote AND the specific date 'July 20' to RPG Site, but RPG Site's own snapshot (published July 22, undated LinkedIn post) does not itself state the post was made on July 20 — that specific date is better supported by FinalWeapon, whose snapshot shows the story was already published on July 20. The July 20 date is accurate and independently corroborated, so this is a weak-attribution nuance rather than a factual error, and I judged it too minor to warrant its own corrections entry (the underlying fact holds and is supported elsewhere in the same paragraph's source set).

Well-sourced, accurately quoted, neutral News piece. All integrity checks pass (valid Ed25519 signature, valid hash, v3 submission format, contributor_model present). The only issue is a source-allowlist housekeeping gap on 4 of 7 sources, all independently verified as reputable and accurately cited. APPROVE_WITH_CORRECTIONS with a single clarification-severity corrections entry documenting the allowlist gap.