No open Dawn of War II Retribution beta

There will be no open registration for the multiplayer Dawn of War II: Retribution beta whatsoever, THQ has announced.

Instead, invites will be dished out on three separate occasions.

First to get a look-in will be key community members and press on Monday, 31st January.

Next, those who pre-ordered Retribution on Steam. They'll find the doors open from 1st February.

Finally, invites will be given to anybody who has ever bought a Dawn of War game using Steam. This will happen on 8th February.

The multiplayer beta runs until midnight Eastern Time on 24th February, which means early morning 25th February for Europeans.

Dawn of War II: Retribution is the first of the series to integrate the Steamworks developer tools - hence the Steam link.

Exactly how it all works you'll be able to test for yourself. And once the beta is over, developer Relic will begin incorporating feedback for day-one game patch.

Eurogamer took a look at Dawn of War II: Retribution mere days ago. What did we think? "The RTS genre is often considered to be on the hardcore end of the gaming spectrum. With StarCraft 2, however, Blizzard proved that if you build it, they will come. If you found yourself caught up in the pre-launch hype for that game, dipped a toe in the water and found yourself pleasantly surprised, Dawn of War 2: Retribution needs to be on your watch list."