The closed beta for Ubisoft’s open-world racer The Crew kicks off on Monday, July 21, and we’ve got 30 codes to share. The game, which is the product of a collaboration between developers Ivory Tower and Ubisoft Reflections, presents players with an open world United States (just the 48 contiguous states) to cruise around in with other drivers. There’s racing, there’s time trials, there’s some competitive battles… it’s a bit of everything.
Update: All the codes have been given out! Thanks everyone.
The beta runs until July 25, and it features a limited slice of the main game. You can find a full rundown of what’s included right here. Don’t forget that this is a test, so it’s not at all indicative of the final experience. You may run into bugs and the like. Don’t be alarmed. That’s why Ubi’s swinging open the doors on letting you play.
If you want to nab one of the 30 codes we’re sharing this weekend, keep watching @DigitalTrends on Twitter. We’ll be blasting out opportunities to win on Saturday and Sunday. They’re going in batches of five and we’ll be tweeting it out from the Digital Trends Twitter sometime between 12 p.m. and 5 p.m. ET (9 a.m. to 2 p.m. PT) each day. The first five to tweet “Racing with the #DTCrew” at @digitaltrends and @geminibros win.
Be sure to take note of the minimum and recommended hardware requirements, however. This is a PC beta, so make sure your machine is up for it. You find hardware requirements and code redemption instructions below.
Operating System: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 (64bit)
Processor: Intel Core2 Quad Q9300 @ 2.5 GHz or better OR AMD Athlon II X4 620 @ 2.6 GHz or better
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 or AMD Radeon HD4870 (512MB VRAM with Shader Model 4.0 or higher)
Operating System: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 (64bit)
Processor: Intel Core i5 750 @ 2.66 GHz or better OR AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3.0 GHz or better
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX580 or AMD Radeon HD6870 (1024MB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0 or higher)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX260 or better, GeForce 400, 500, 600, 700 series (only cards superior to GTX260, performance-wise);
AMD Radeon HD4870 or better, HD5000, HD6000, HD7000, R-series (only cards superior to HD4870, performance-wise)
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.