Paladins Enters Open Beta, Now Available On Steam

After ten months in Closed Beta, Paladins is now ready to open up to the masses. The game officially entered Open Beta today, meaning that anyone can now play the competitive character shooter completely without needing to either have a Beta key or pay for a Founder's Pack. With the launch of Open Beta, the game now has a competitive mode with a leaderboard, a new UI, a new match lobby, a new map called "Enchanted Forest," the ability to mix and match skins for your head, body, and weapon.

Hi-Rez Studios founder and COO Todd Harris had the following to say about the announcement.

Since the start of closed beta late last year we’ve been refining the core gameplay and the overall user experience. Paladins is a team shooter with a fantasy setting, a sense of humor, and a high degree of customization and strategy. Paladins is now and always will be free-to-play and with our move to Open Beta anyone can download the game from the Paladins website or Steam. We look forward to continuing to shape and improve the game with an even larger community.

With the launch of Open Beta, Paladins is now available on Steam. The Steam version has Steam Achievements and Steam players who play as Barik five times will be awarded a Barik skin based on the Engineer from Team Fortress 2. According to Steam Charts, it is doing quite well, with 2,913 players online as of this writing. (Up to 5700 as of 1:21PM PST)

Despite launching on Steam, Paladins can still be played without Steam by downloading it from the official website.