@jetah said in Open Beta: @fibs @Nightcoder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Open_and_closed_beta open beta is when they allow everyone in to 'test/play' the game to see if they want to buy it (unless it's a f2p game then it's more advertisement). closed beta is when you are selected from a pool or pay to enter it. it's like having an open bar at a wedding or a pay for drinks. From the wiki page: Examples of a major public beta test include the following: Early customers purchased a "pioneer edition" of the WordVision word processor for the IBM PC for $49.95. In 1984, Stephen Manes wrote that "in a brilliant marketing coup, Bruce and James Program Publishers managed to get people to pay for the privilege of testing the product."[9] So according to this, open beta does not have to be free at all. I think that there's no absolute truth here and that different people may have different definitions of "open" vs "closed" beta. I actually also define a third "semi-open" kind. The way I see it - As far as free to play games are considered, it's only considered open beta if it's free. For paid games (especially pay once) I consider it to be open beta if the beta access is already included in the retail game price, i.e. everyone who pre-orders the final game also gets beta access and does not have to pay extra. Semi-open is (in my opinion) when you need to pay extra to join the beta, but other than that there's nothing that keeps you from joining. Closed is when the testers are a closed group, i.e. a random person cannot join no matter how much s/he wants or when the extra price is high enough for most people to pass, therefore limiting the number of beta testers to a relatively few. So according to these definitions I'd consider the pre-alpha and alpha 1 to be "closed", because pre-alpha is a closed group decided by the devs and alpha 1 costs €200, more than most people are willing to pay. Alpha 2 may also fall into that category (costs €100). Beta 1 would be "semi-open", since it costs €60. It's not incredibly steep but still twice the price of the retail game (€30). Beta 2 according to this definition is open because it comes at no extra charge (right now it's actually €5 cheaper) and that includes the retail copy so you don't pay anything for the beta itself and most importantly - everyone who pre-orders the game has access to beta 2, there's no way of pre-ordering the retail game without being able to join the beta. Of course, I will say that it can change, e.g. if the devs decide that beta access is only sold until a certain point in time or if the price climbs so it's not possible to join the currently-running beta without paying extra (over the retail price).