Dust 514 links to EVE Online in latest beta update

Dust 514 - the upcoming multiplayer shooter from EVE Online developer CCP Games - features one of the most intriguing concepts in gaming today: part of its universe will overlap with another online multiplayer game.

Specifically, players from EVE Online will be able to hire clans and groups in the game as mercenaries to wrest political control of planets, and will be able to actually provide orbital bombardment support to players in-game - from an orbiting ship in EVE to the ground of the Dust 514 battlefield.

It's an incredibly ambitious plan, and CCP has announced that they will finally begin bringing the concept to fruition later this month on August 21 when the program enters beta. Dust 514 has been in closed beta for a while, but this new update will introduce the new universe-crossing features for the first time, linking the Dust beta to the EVE test server.

We don't know yet whether this will be an amazing feature or a passing amusement for all but the EVE Online oligarchy, but we'll be very interested to see the results. At this point in the beta, the only features that will be active are cross-game real-time chat, and orbital bombardment.

The update will also add several new weapons and levels to the beta.