The Crew to enter closed beta next month, applications now open

Ubisoft's nation spanning 'CarPG' The Crew will enter its beta period on July 23, and applications are now open . You'll need a uPlay account to be elligible, and the publisher is warning that all manner of bugs and glitches are liable to occur, which is par for the course in the world of closed betas.

The Crew is representative of a trend among major game publishers to turn everything into a quasi-MMO. I played it a couple of months ago and the preview build was chock full of content, with the world itself large enough to contain Skyrim, Far Cry 3 and both Grand Theft Auto games with room to spare. Developed by Ivory Tower and Ubisoft Reflections, there's some reputable talent involved, including hands that worked on Test Drive Unlimited and the severely underrated Driver: San Francisco .

PC Gamer's Alex Dale gave it a spin in August . He said that "for all its ambition and for all its variety, The Crew's open-world driving is destined to be an acquired taste." The game releases November 11.

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Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.