Ubisoft cancels pre-order Beta Anno 2205
Ubisoft slash dev Blue Byte decided to cancel the Anno 2205 pre-order beta. Instead the people who purchased the pre-order will receive an exclusive vehicle and social emblem when the game is released November 3rd.
In a post on the German Ubisoft forums, the publisher announced the cancellation of the closed beta, access to which was included with pre-orders made over the last few weeks. No explanation was given for the cancellation, but the planned November 3 release date has not been altered at this stage, Ubisoft said.
Dear Anno players and fans,
As you may know, Anno 2205 will be playable for the first time by fans at Gamescom next week. We are indeed very excited to put the game in the players’ hands and we will look forward to receiving feedback at this occasion. However, we won’t be able to hold the previously announced closed beta. Still, we can’t wait to take you to the moon on November 3rd.
As a reward for your engagement, and because we want to thank our most loyal players, the development team is making sure to provide an in-game bonus for those of you who have or will pre-order the game before release. More details will be revealed in the coming weeks, but here’s a preview of this unlockable item.
For those of you who pre-ordered Anno 2205 in store, you will get this exclusive Command Ship and also an exclusive Corporation Emblem with the provided code.
If you pre-ordered the game digitally, you will receive it shortly before release from our digital partners.
We are looking forward to delivering Anno 2205, which represents for us a key evolution of the Anno franchise.
Best,
The Anno 2205 team
Anno 2205 is the sixth game in the series and set further into the future of any before it – in case the title didn’t give that away. It will be playable at gamescom 2015 this week.
Seriously, people should stop pre-ordering games for these betas. The devs get tons of money and cashflow for an unfinished game and meanwhile you get a free vehicle to use in the final game, sheesh.
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Junior Member
Posts: 10
Joined: 2015-04-21
I hate this.
Guild Wars 2 just had a closed BETA for its upcoming expansion. Only people invited were the prepurchase players.
Not even considering how useless prepurchasing unlimited digitally distributed software is.
Senior Member
Posts: 8305
Joined: 2008-07-31
Why is Ubisoft so backwards on their software development life cycle? A closed beta is exactly what a game like this needs for a successful launch. Anno has quite the following and I am sure there are more than a few diehard fans that would love to test their game for free.
@Ubisoft, get with the times. Fix your development testing requirements (QA), and fix your post release support; both are horrible.
Who wants to do betas when people won't treat them like betas and cancel their pre-order due to their dislike of a beta?
Seriously, this is a valid question. I'm not surprised and won't be surprised at all if companies start doing less and less betas for fear of people canceling their pre-orders because of a BETA.
Senior Member
Posts: 1518
Joined: 2007-03-18
there should be no payment involved in beta testing...that's the whole point. They should be the ones paying beta testers or just select from pool of people that applied to test specific parts of the game and give feedback and report bugs etc. It's a job after all.
It's like I said earlier: closed beta testing, selected users (selection based on what developers want to test) + NDA
This is actually how this worked 10 years ago and still works but very few companies do it. Nowdays they prefer to hire internal testers. But they pay them, because, like I said, it's a job

Senior Member
Posts: 8305
Joined: 2008-07-31
there should be no payment involved in beta testing...that's the whole point. They should be the ones paying beta testers or just select from pool of people that applied to test specific parts of the game and give feedback and report bugs etc. It's a job after all.
It's like I said earlier: closed beta testing, selected users (selection based on what developers want to test) + NDA
This is actually how this worked 10 years ago and still works but very few companies do it. Nowdays they prefer to hire internal testers. But they pay them, because, like I said, it's a job

There is not payment in regards to beta testing. There's payment for the game, of which as a bonus you have access to beta testing. No one "pays" to beta test.
Senior Member
Posts: 1518
Joined: 2007-03-18
Sure, closed betas still exist but less so than payed beta and early alpha access things that are for sale... :/