As promised here is the PC Blog on the Beta & a few other things, yes some people, places, and things may have leaked a little something, but we are here to clarify everything and make it all official since we can now commit to the listed dates!



BETA Details:
Beta Begins/Ends: Jan 28th/Feb 25th
Map Name: Port Valdez
Players 32
Game Mode: Rush

Environment: Snow
Theme Vehicle and Infantry

Back Story
The battle for Port Valdez is fought alongside the waterline towards a great oil industrial landscape in the Alaskan mountains. Using basically everything they've got the Russian forces are launching an airborne assault to knock out the oil industries in the area. In their arsenal there are Main Battle Tanks as well as fast-moving Quad Bikes and mobile armored AA. It's a vehicle focused battle, but with plenty of infantry combat.
How to Download: Check back to the Battlefield Bed Company 2 Beta Page closer to beta launch date for download instructions.

How To Get Access: Reserve Battlefield Bad Company 2 is the most sure fire way and right now we are still finalizing which Retailers & e-Tailers will participate (it's up to them). If you're eager to ensure you get in confirmed distributors to Pre-Order consumers are the EA Store and at GameStop.com. We'll have another Blog to update new retailers & e-Tailers that have teamed up with us as well as alternate channels to obtain a Beta Key.

Misc. Details

Steam Beta: Yes there was a leaked image of a Package file we propped on Steam. People with illegal accounts can see games in this environment, but this is not a Beta in the term of Public Test Beta, but a real development Beta installer client for the Steam version of the full game. We are however working with Steam to have the Public PC Beta available on Steam, but can't confirm this quite yet so cross your fingers Steam users.

Anti Cheat: We're going with PunkBuster supporting the same options BF2 and BF2142 had to run unranked without PunkBuster.

Mod Tools: There will not be mod tools for BFBC2. However a majority of the the games logic is controller by the server and there will be Serverside control options for the dedicated servers.

Public Server Files: We will not distribute these publicly. There are many factors for why we have decided this with the biggest factor being security & integrity of our game & Dedicated Servers.

I'm not sure what this means for dedicated servers. Will we be able to rent only from an approved GSP, or will there just be "official" dedis that spare us the indignities of a listen server?

I'm highly disappointed with this news, and also it appears I can't even try the demo out without preorder... I was really looking forward to this game after being shut out of the CoD series. Now it appears as though BF is going by the wayside as well...

I'm highly disappointed with this news, and also it appears I can't even try the demo out without preorder... I was really looking forward to this game after being shut out of the CoD series. Now it appears as though BF is going by the wayside as well...

So....two questions then.....

1. What does the lack of freely available dedicated server packages mean for LANs? Does this mean at a LAN you can only play Peer to Peer, or worse, that you have to connect to an internet server?

2. What are the implications here for smaller countries like NZ, Locations in South America, and other places on the 'fringe' of the internet - where will servers be located, or will we have to be content with a 120-150 ping (in which case we might as well have bought MW2).

C'mon Dice......get with the program here.