Revision - open beta - Gears of War: E-Day Wiki

The Gears of War: E-Day Open Beta ran over two weekends in August 2026 and has concluded. It offered a subset of launch content across Horde Siege and 4v4 Versus. Everything on this page is beta-era: several values here were explicitly temporary and do not describe the shipping game.

Schedule and Access

Weekend	Window	Who could play
Weekend 1, Early Access	August 6 at 12:00 PT to August 10 at 10:00 PT	Players who pre-ordered on Xbox Series X\|S or Steam, plus Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass members
Weekend 2, Open	August 13 at 12:00 PT to August 17 at 10:00 PT	All players on all eligible platforms, no pre-order required

Beta content was identical across both weekends. Game Pass was not required for the second weekend, though console online play still needed a subscription tier that includes online multiplayer. At launch, multiplayer requires Game Pass Essential or higher, which is covered on Release and Platforms.

Versus was not originally part of the first weekend. It was added after player feedback, announced in an August 4 update to the beta post with the line that they heard players and acted.

Rewards

Beta rewards unlocked for use during the beta and then landed in the player inventory at launch.

Reward	Requirement
Blast Damage Mags Epic Character Skin	Reach Player Level 20
Crush the Bug Rare Weapon Skin Set	Extract from Horde Siege 8 times on Infantry difficulty or higher
Crush the Bug Banner	Get 25 headshots
Crush the Bug Emblem	Perform 10 revives
Crush the Bug Icon	Perform 5 Prototype Lancer chainsaw executions
Open Beta Medal and First in the Fight Title	Launch the multiplayer beta

Progress Carryover

The Beta Player Title, the Beta Medal and any beta challenge rewards carry to launch. Class progression, Player Level and other medal progress were reset and do not carry over. Progress did carry between the two beta weekends, including challenge and medal progress, rewards, class progression and Player Level. The launch progression systems are on Progression and Medals.

August 12 Changes

A change list landed between the two weekends. The balance entries are beta-era tuning and should not be read as launch statistics.

Prototype Lancer: base damage increased, perfect reload damage reduced.
Hit detection: improved hit detection delays players were experiencing in Horde Siege.
Stability: reduced crash frequency across all platforms.
Connection timeouts: mitigations implemented.
Matchmaking: further improvements in both Social and Ranked Versus.
Networking: the port requirement changed from UDP 443 to UDP 3074 as part of the drone-snub error fix.
Anti-cheat: improved protection and enforcement action against verified cheaters.
Controllers: fixed some third-party controllers not being recognised on launch on Steam.
Account linking: fixed an issue preventing Microsoft account linking.
Xbox Series S: further work to reduce hitching.

Error Codes

Code	Cause and workaround
drone-snub	Network port issue. Addressed by the change from UDP 443 to UDP 3074; if it persisted, the required ports had to be opened on the network.
quentin-ephyra	Authentication error related to Xbox Quick Resume. The workaround was to disable Quick Resume in system settings.
bryce-vigil	A mismatch between the system date and time settings and local time. Fixed by re-syncing the clock.
gill-gutpuncher	Same cause and fix as bryce-vigil.

Beta-Era Limitations

Several beta restrictions were stated as temporary and explicitly absent from the final game. Frame generation was disabled and the framerate was capped at 150 frames per second. Aim assist was noted as affecting the campaign and Horde Siege only, with a missing clarification in the settings menu; that exclusion for Versus is a real design rule rather than a beta issue.

Other beta-era notes: an SSD was required and hard drives were unsupported, recording software older than a certain version caused crashes, some Intel Arc cards recompiled shaders on every launch, and extended Horde Siege sessions on Xbox Series S could hitch in Quality Mode with a full restart as the workaround. Driver minimums during the beta were AMD 26.7.1, Intel 101.8864 and NVIDIA 610.74 or newer, with the game refusing to launch on older NVIDIA drivers.

Beta Specs Are Not Launch Specs

Separate recommended PC specifications were published for the beta with an explicit note that they were not launch specifications. Only the launch figures are recorded on System Requirements, and the PC feature set on PC Features and Graphics Options.

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