They could also just change the game they sold. I had an early print of Need for Speed Carbon for PS2. I couldn't unlock most of the cop cars due to a bug, iirc. Later burns fixed it
Interesting! Back then I had a playstation and a pc. Never have i ever had a patch for any of the games i owned. The magazine mostly had demo versions of games, freeware or sometimes even a full version of a game. However never seen a path! Perhaps i was an ignorant kid not aware of such features.
In the magazines I bought, they had demos and maybe a crude review video. And when they had some spare space on the CD or DVD, they'd add a folder with patches.