During the lead up to their release of Arena Commander 1.0, the team at Cloud Imperium Games made their new Star Citizen Public Test Universe (PTU) open to a very limited number of backers. Similar to the status of a testing server in other online games, this universe offers players access to experimental versions of upcoming patches. Although they were originally planning on rolling the option to switch the standard and PTU universes out to backers in waves, CIG have instead announced that all Star Citizen backers can make the switch.
CIG warns that the PTU is “not for the faint of heart”, and what you experience could be either unstable or otherwise non-functional (After all, you will essentially be playing a beta test of an alpha build). If you are looking for a clean dogfight with players, you are encouraged to stick with the standard build that all players currently have access to.
CIG have provided a guide to transition your account over to the Public Test Universe, which you can read for yourself below:
Step One: Copy your RSI account to the PTU. Go to your My RSI area, select settings and then access Public Test Universe to begin this process. This will copy all of your account settings, pledges and configuration data to the PTU version of the RSI environment. You will then receive an email with a new password and additional instructions.
Step Two: Open the Star Citizen launcher, log in with your existing RSI account.
Step Three: Access the Settings area of the Star Citizen launcher (the cog at the top) and locate the Game Channel list.
Step Four: Select ‘Public Test Universe’ in the Game Channel list and then close the settings page.
Step Five: Log out of the Launcher, then log back in using the new password in the email generated by Step One. Reverse this process to switch back to the standard release channel.
