Flamin Flat Capp (YouTube)

From there, you need to hand over the item you want to duplicate to Stockpile Thomas, the NPC who stores your extra junk. This will cause your character to enter the Nexial Binding animation, which you must cancel with Circle. If everything was performed correctly, the item you gave Thomas will have appeared in storage, duplicated into a stack of 1024. Please don’t ask me why this works!

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In the Demon’s Souls remake, however, the above process is interrupted at Blacksmith Boldwin. Whereas on PlayStation 3 you could simply cancel a conversation or purchase by walking away from the NPC, the same thing doesn’t happen on PlayStation 5. Boldwin’s purchase confirmation window remains on-screen until you accept or cancel, preventing the subsequent steps necessary to activate the original game’s duplication trick. And I’ve yet to find a new method to initiate the technique.

Bluepoint Games creative director Gavin Moore told Polygon in October that his team would be largely removing exploitable glitches in the Demon’s Souls remake, intending to leave only “meme-worthy” bugs and “game design quirks” from the original. As item duplication can make a character incredibly strong and resourceful early in the game, it’s obvious if it was one of the exploitable glitches Bluepoint sought to remove.

I’ll admit to having used the duplication glitch frequently during my time with Demon’s Souls on PlayStation 3. I came to the game late and wanted to progress through the story without having to rely on farming materials or worrying about my healing items. But part of me is glad the temptation has been removed on PlayStation 5, if only for my own enjoyment of the game’s challenge. I’m just crossing my fingers that extremely rare crafting items like Pure Bladestone have indeed had their droprates improved.

Kotaku has contacted Sony for more information.

Update (11/12/2020, 6:46 p.m. ET): Sony confirmed to Kotaku that the duplication glitch has been removed in the Demon’s Souls remake.