By now most of you have probably heard that we'll going to be launching Hegemony through Steam's Early Access program on Feb 12. We've always been interested in the program but we weren't actually planning this when we started the closed beta. However, we've really appreciated everyone's feedback so far and this seemed a good way of carrying the beta forward to the next level.

So, what does this mean for the closed beta? Officially, we will be closing it down Feb 12 and everybody who's been testing so far will automatically get updated to the Early Access release (and eventually the full version).

However, even during Early Access we will still need to double check our builds before they go live to the wider audience so we will still be keeping the 'beta' branch active for internal testing and for a limited number of external testers. The only catch is that we ask anyone testing this beta version to keep feedback on our forums rather than on steam so it doesn't get confusing.

And the last bit of news: we've got a lot of testing to do before the early access launch so we will be sending out a few more beta codes over the weekend. Unfortunately, we still won't be able to include everybody who applied, but for those who don't make this cut we hope you join in the with Early Access.

Thanks, we appreciate the sentiment. Nothing is final right now, and retail decisions are really Kalypso's territory, but it was our plan from the beginning to have Rome available on our site just like Gold and Philip were. At the moment we're concentrating on the Early Access launch which will be Steam only, but as we get closer to the full release we'll announce more.

Just a quick status update on the beta ... normally we try to get an update out by the end of the week, but we've been working on some fairly significant AI & scripting changes and combined with the Early Access announcement we didn't quite make it. We've got a few things to tidy up on monday, but we're hoping the next build will be out by tuesday.

Just finished sending out the last batch of codes for the closed beta. Unfortunately, we still had far too many applicants than we could accept. So if you didn't receive an invite today, thanks for your interest and we hope you join us when we launch on Early Access.

Yes, the game will launch on Early Access on Feb 12 so anybody who still wants to get involved and give feedback can join in then.