The game has been released - and so has the very first patch for Pro Cycling Manager 2011.

There's a bunch of fixes in every part of the game. For example, breakaways will no longer manage to stay away as much as they did before the patch, and national champions will now be properly set after winning the NC for the 2nd time.

You can read the full list of fixes after the break - or go straight to the download here.

As the release of Pro Cycling Manager 2011 nears, more and more people have managed to get their own copies of the game early. As such, more feedback and screenshots are starting to emerge in our PCM11 General News forum thread. For example, there is a screenshot showing breakaway riders sprinting for an intermediate sprint - after that feature was notably missing in PCM10.

For those of you wanting to know as much about the new game as possible, it would be a good idea to keep following this forum thread through the day!

Halifax, the Italian distributor, gave us a couple of new screenshots of PCM11 yesterday, and today, Focus has followed up by releasing four new screenshots.

Again, there's not a whole lot to say about them, but riders covered in mud is (still) a great showcase of one of the improvements of PCM11. You can see all four screenshots here.

Don't forget that you can pre-order PCM11 through PCM.daily. Read more here.

As promised, it's now possible to buy Pro Cycling Manager 2011 through a special PCM.daily link and support the site at the same time.

We have made a deal similar to last year's which means that when you buy the game through one of the PCM.daily links, a part of your money will go to PCM.daily rather than Focus. So you pay the same, but we get a share of the revenue.

The banners are already up on the frontpage and in the forum, and there's also a link the left menu. This one directs you to the buying page for your country, but as several of you have noticed, it may be a good idea to change the country in the right-hand corner as that may mean a lower price. If you do change it, the PCM.daily referral is removed. For example:

If I open the link, I'm directed to http://eu-focushop.gamesplanet.com/shop/pro-cycling-manager-tour-de-france-2011?affiliate=PCMDAILY.
If I change to US, the address changes to http://us-focushop.gamesplanet.com/shop/pro-cycling-manager-tour-de-france-2011/, which does not have the affliate tag by the end of the address - meaning that you're not supporting PCM.daily. If you remove the last / and add ?affiliate=PCMDAILY to the address, it will work properly, though.

Otherwise, use these links: EU || UK || US || France || Germany || Italy || Spain

All the money go to paying the costs of running the site. We got close to covering 100 % of the costs last year, so to all of those who bought the game through PCM.daily last year: If I haven't already said it - thank you!

And to those buying the game through PCM.daily this year: Thanks a lot in advance.

Thanks to the Italian distributor of PCM11, Halifax, and the Italian fansite Cycling-Manager.eu, we have five new screenshots of PCM11 that may kill at least two minutes of the wait until the official release on the 23rd.

There's not a whole lot to say about the screenshots, but feel free to have a look anyway.