Anno 1800 open beta weekend is live
Build away!
Ahead of Monday's launch, Anno 1800 is now holding an open beta weekend inviting all and sundry to play the latest in the city-building strategy series. Can you run a profitable city/business empire/society without it being collapsed by the many pressures at the dawn of the 19th century? And more importantly, can you build a city which looks real cute and has a cracking zoo? You can now see, for free.
The beta started at 1am today and will run until midnight on Sunday. The midnight that spans Sunday/Monday, not the Saturday/Sunday midnight. You have until Monday starts to play it, okay.
You can download the Anno 1800 open beta client the Epic Games Store or through Uplay. It'll want 30-odd gigs of disk space, as well as these here system specs. The open beta also requires constant Internet connection, which the full game will not. And saves won't carry over to the launch version.
Anno 1800 launches in full on Tuesday, April 16th. It'll be on the Epic Games Store and Ubi's shop for £50/€60/$60.
As for a Steam release, ah, you can still pre-order it from Steam but Ubi will pull it from sale there on the 16th. That's the power of Epic splashing cash all over for hot exclusives. The Steam version will be patched and be able to play with the versions sold on other stores but yeah, if you want it on Steam any time soon you'll need to pre-order. Epic's exclusivity deals tend to last for one year, so maybe it'll return in April 2020?