Following the recent troubles at Trion, a number of strange things have gone amiss. FPS fans will have noticed Crytek’s Warface suddenly disappeared from Trion’s website. There has been a disturbing abundance of “no comments” from both parties surrounding this mystery, but fear not as Warface will be playable once more at Gamescom, with closed beta testing reconvening on August 21.
Hot on the heels of the news that Warface has entered Closed Beta, Crytek have released another tempting morsel to convince you to sign up. Fresh from the studio is this Closed Beta trailer, showing off that CryEngine 3 goodness in glorious detail.
Published by Trion Worlds through their Red Door platform, Warface offers two modes of play. Competitive PvP sees teams battling it out against each other for dominance, while co-op PvE creates a random daily challenge intended for teams of 5 players.
Already wildly successful in Russia, players in US and Europe can sign up for the closed beta now. Full launch is planned for later in Spring 2013.
When I first heard about Warface, I was surprised. Crytek , the developer behind such legendary shooters as Crysis and Far Cry, was entering the free-to-play arena. To my uneducated eyes the process was simple: produce some incredible games, sell a staggering number of copies, rinse and repeat. But as producer Peter Holzapfel described at the recent Eurogamer Expo, the gaming landscape is changing.
On the surface, Warface is a superbly executed first-person shooter, as you’d expect from a developer with a pedigree like Crytek’s. For the 100-strong team at the developer’s Kiev studio, the game represents something more; an opportunity to find out how free-to-play actually works in the myriad of markets throughout the globe. In creating a lightweight, accessible, team based shooter, the team has built a laboratory of carnage with which to experiment.
It’s an experiment that already seems to be paying off, with Warface launched in some territories. When I asked Holzapfel about how it had performed in Russia, he grinned at me before replying. “What would be the correct adjective… mind-blowingly successful so far?” By partnering with Trion in Western markets, Crytek hopes to repeat that success when beta starts later this year.
