Batch 1 - Friends & Family internal test
Quite a few of you wonder why you haven't had any chance to sign-up for the first batch of the Beta. This was due to this first batch being available for a pre-selected group only. The members of this group are people who have been invited by EA and/or Crytek to join the Beta program of Crysis. There has been a very limited number of available keys for them. Additionally Fileplanet gave a few of their Founder's Club Members the chance to sign-up for this event as well.

This is our final test to verify the stability before the initial Beta begins. It is an important test for EA and Crytek since we can see how everything works under real life conditions. This internal test is not directly related to the rest of the Beta. Therefore we did not plan to official announce it.

Payment required to access the Beta? No!
We have read a lot of posts about people who mentioned that you need to pay additional money to be able to join the Beta. Just let me get this straight - this is definitely not the case. When you have a subscriber account you will be able to sign-up for one of the upcoming batches.

The payment many of you have been discussing about was related to the Founder's Club membership of Fileplanet which was needed to get one of the very few places in the first batch. Founder's Club membership is not necessary to take part in the upcoming batches.