The closed beta for Concord, Sony's new hero shooter, is underway - and the open beta arrives on Thursday

The Concord beta is now underway for folks who pre-ordered Sony's upcoming hero shooter or who are subscribed to PlayStation Plus. If that's you, you should be able to grab the PC version from Steam and play from now until July 14th.

For those that haven't paid in one capacity or the other, don't sweat it: a second beta open to everyone will launch later this week and run from July 18th until the 21st.

To play Concord. you'll need to have a PlayStation account linked to your Steam account. Yes, this is the same requirement that caused a huge backlash with Helldivers 2, but here the requirement is at least present and communicated in advance, rather than introduced sometime post-launch.

If you're struggling to keep your upcoming hero shooters straight, you're not alone. Concord is the 5v5 multiplayer first-person shooter about Guardians Of The Galaxy-like space mercs quipping, shooting and casting magic powers at one another. There's a green alien and a heavy robot and a character called Star Child. One of the characters has somes of jumpjet or hover abilities. There are hitscan weapons including machineguns, sniper rifles, and Revolver-like pistols, as well as ground pounds and area-of-effect fireballs.

All of which is the work of Firewalk, a new first-party Sony studio.

Am I pumped to play Overwatch again? Not really, but then I felt the same way about Valorant, and I had a perfectly pleasant time playing that after its launch. Maybe I like things that are like the things that I like? Maybe that's why they make 'em like those things.

I'll probably wait for the full release to find out, anyway. Concord is due to release for realsies on August 23rd. For those less patient, you can find the beta system requirements over on Steam.