Treyarch Warns Against Black Ops 2 Beta Offers

Treyarch’s design director confirms that Black Ops 2 beta keys are not yet available.

There was a time, many years ago, when “beta testing” meant playing a game in all sorts of repetitive and un-fun ways in an effort to break it, in order to ensure that it wouldn’t be broken when it finally went to release. These days, though, it’s more often employed as a pre-order incentive, while gamers typically see it as a way to play a new game ahead of everyone else. Offers of beta keys for major upcoming releases tend to get a lot of attention, and there aren’t many upcoming releases bigger than Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

But there aren’t any beta keys for it yet, either. A quick Google of “black ops 2 beta keys” leads to numerous sites purporting to offer them, but Treyarch Design Director David Vonderhaar confirmed recently that none of them are legit.

“The answer is no,” he tweeted in response to a question about whether beta codes had been released. “Don’t trust that.”

Black Ops 2 isn’t even in a beta state yet, Vonderhaar revealed in a later tweet. “The game is at alpha. That means we are just now starting to tune and polish all of the gameplay systems,” he wrote. “Way more to come.”

Oh well, at least we still have Half-Life 3 at Gamescom, right? Oh.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 comes out on November 13 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U and PC.