Stardock and Ironclad Games have announced that beta 1 for "Sins of a Solar Empire" has been released and is now available via TotalGaming.net and Stardock Central to customers who have pre-ordered the game.

"The beta is available to all who preordered the game at TotalGaming.net, and its primary purpose is to act as a compatibility test, to ensure that Sins runs beautifully on a wide range of system setups. Beta 1 allows for single-player sandbox games as the Trader Emergency Coalition, while future beta iterations will add progressively more features, leading to the final game release that will knock the socks off strategy gamers everywhere."