Battlefield: Bad Company 2 PC Beta Start Date, Miscellaneous Details Revealed

Following up on its promise that the public beta for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 PC would kick off "very early" in 2010, developer EA DICE has announced the beta will run January 28 through February 25, 2010 along with several other details.

Perhaps most notable of the assorted revelations is word that "there will not be mod tools for BFBC2" though "there will be Serverside control options" available on rented dedicated servers, with the entirety of today's announcement viewable below:

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.

Today's details reaffirm DICE's earlier announcement that while Bad Company 2 does support dedicated servers on PC, they must be rented from its "trusted partners."

The full version of DICE's single- and multiplayer shooter sequel is due at North American retailers come March 2 in PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 form, with all three platforms slated to arrived proper multiplayer demos as well.