Hello everyone! Today we’re trying something new with an experimental program inspired by feedback from you—the Age II community! We’re calling this the Public Update Preview program, or “PUP” for short. These Update Previews will not only provide a sneak peek to owners of the game, but an opportunity for passionate players to step up, be recognized, and help us squash issues before they ever arise.
Starting today, everyone that owns Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition on Steam will have immediate access to the Public Update Preview. This is a publicly-available, Steam ‘BETA’ branch accessible via your Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition properties menu. Opting into it will give you access to game content that is actively in development for the next game update.
Edit: it seems the link will stubbornly take you out of the Steam client and to the web browser (where you may not be logged in anymore (regardless if you’re logged in in the Steam client) so you would have to sign into Steam an additional time (for the web browser.)
It allows multiplayer between people using the PUP version with a separate pool from what the post I read on steam says
Blockquote
You can only matchmake, see or join Lobbies, and play Multiplayer against other users also with the same preview build – this does not connect to the Live game
This is so good… Seems like the devs are listening to us. This is just an open beta for future patches. This looks very great. Hopefully this will result in less buggy patches in the future, since bugs are identified much more quickly!
I’ve seen this question asked by a few people, and would certainly love to involve as many people as possible in the endeavor. Unfortunately, the Microsoft Store doesn’t allow for the rapid iteration or implementation of changes, so (at least for now) the program will not be available to Microsoft Store users.
Correct! All PUP conversation should be directed to the Steam forums for the sake of consolidation and to ensure that it can result in actionable change.
Hi @GMEvangelos, I know the Minecraft for Windows 10 team has a beta through the Insider Hub app, so at least it is possible and may be worth reaching out to Mojang to see how they do it. Although there currently isn’t a version of Minecraft for Windows 10 on Steam which may complicate what seems to me as plausible.
True. What I was specifically talking about though was an Insider Hub beta running at the same time as the live version and the user being able to switch back and forth between versions with an update. In the past, Insider Hub beta versions were completely separate from the live version which requires downloading the entire game over again to switch between versions.
The MCC team (Halo) gives out steam codes just for beta access for those that only have the Windows Store version. I don’t know if that would be hard to implement (since we are connecting our microsoft accounts to the forums here) but it could be a way to do it.
This was a long time coming. Very glad that new iterations will finally under go some type of testing via players before publishing into the wild blindly hoping for the best
This is why I wont be participating in PUP. Aside from having to log into yet another place (as if we don’t do enough of that on a daily basis), the thought of trying to report and review bugs or issues using Steam’s forums doesn’t sound fun at all.
I tried to post a PUP issue here in this forum but it got closed saying I need to use the Steam forum. So, no AoE forum? No PUP for me.
PS: I got the same error as you at first and thought for a short while they had temporarily taken down the PUP program without announcing it. I was about to post a bug report on it here, but then figured it out.
Now Available: the Public Update Preview (PUP) program!
[FAQ] About the Public Update Preview :: Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition 
Public Update Preview - March (steamcommunity.com)
