Tue Feb 18, 2003 11:02 pm by stevedroid
Well if we're discussing the PR beta, there is no NDA.
The PR beta (v1196) was distributed to retailers with nothing more than the instruction packet and the disk. No additional information was given to the retailers other than it was expressly for store employee use only (though it seems plenty of store have broken that rule - the disk was never intended as a gift for pre-orders).
Actually when you think about it, an NDA on the PR beta would be counter productive. After all, the whole point of it is that MS wants store employees talking about the game, giving it glowing personal reviews and whatnot. Therefore there's absolutely no NDA regarding the PR beta.
However, the whole deal with non game-retailers having copies of the beta is questionable. Quite frankly I'm rather surprised MS distributed so many copies of the beta - in some cases as many as ten per store (though I'm sure MS dealed only with corporate and did not decide on the distribution to individual stores). They did a similar release with Mechwarrior Mercenaries, but in that case there were only about 1 or 2 copies per store, enough that the beta was sufficiently contained. Though I suppose that is why they built in that Mission 10 "bug."