DICE has announced that they are closing the beta and delaying the release of Battlefield: Heroes, the free-to-play online PC shooter. The game will finally receive a full release “early next year”.

Senior producer James Salt said on the official website that the beta will close down tonight at 6 p.m. CET. The game will then dissapear until early 2009, allowing the team to spend time “polishing the backend.” *Chuckle.* Salt said, “There’s the 10 percent of the game you can see, and the hiding 90 percent is what we call the ‘backend’.” Ohhh, I seee! I thought you meant… no, doesn’t matter.

The news will come as a bit of a dissapointment as Battlefield: Heroes was expected to slide effortlessly from beta to release. Indeed Salt spoke only this summer saying that the game was effectively out already, as every hardcore gamer could probably get their hands on a beta key.