Tripwire had said it would launch the Rising Storm standalone expansion for Red Orchestra 2 in May and while it cut things close, by gum it's just made it. The dev announced yesterday that it'll be out on Thursday, so do hurry if you want to pre-order and grab the discount and bonus Killing Floor characters.

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Earlier this month I visited Killing Floor and Red Orchestra 2 creator Tripwire Interactive to play Rising Storm, the upcoming standalone expansion to RO2. After the demo, Tripwire President John Gibson and I got talking about the state of first-person shooters, and Gibson laid out a detailed criticism about the way Call of Duty “takes individual skill out of the equation.”

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Tripwire Interactive has announced that Red Orchestra 2's multi-player will be free to play on Steam from today through until Monday, December 17th, to celebrate the release of the Fall 2012 Content Pack.

Now you can try the game for free, plus all the content added in the Game of the Year and Fall 2012 Content Packs, which are completely free to everyone who owns the game. Not only is the game free to play this weekend, but if you decide to pick it up before Monday there's a 75% discount on the game.

The Fall 2012 Content Pack is, of course, free to everyone who already owns the game and includes:

• Barashka, the new map, which is a re-imagining and re-working of an old favorite from the original Red Orchestra. This brings in combined arms combat, villages, bridges and a river crossing to fight for. The map features both Territory and Countdown game modes. 
• Simplified and improved match flow and user interface for the Countdown game mode, which will make it much simpler to understand, making for much more instant and direct battles. 

To encourage everyone to try out the changes, Tripwire will also be issuing double XP towards your Honor from today in the improved Countdown mode.

The latest free content pack for Red Orchestra 2 - the Fall 2012 Content Pack - includes a brand new map, plus a redesign of the Countdown game mode, Tripwire Interactive has announced.

The new map, Barashka, is a re-imagining and re-working of an old favorite from the original Red Orchestra. This brings in combined arms combat, villages, bridges and a river crossing to fight for. The map is playable in both the Territory and Countdown game modes.

In adddition to the new map, Tripwire has also redesigned and improved the Countdown game mode based on feedback from the community. Simplified and improved match flow and user interface will now make it much simpler to understand, making for much more instant and direct battles.

Other community requested features are also included in the content pack, such as walk while actively firing machine guns from the hip; increased stamina pool in Classic; chat system refinements and more.

All of this, as always, is now available for free to everyone who owns the game.

With the success of its recent free weekend on Steam and lots of new players enjoying the new Red Orchestra 2 Game of the Year Edition (below), Tripwire Interactive has decided to do a couple of things to make it even easier to get into the game.

First off, Tripwire has decided to cut the price of the game in half to $19.99/£14.99 and secondly everyone that owns Red Orchestra 2 will now receive a guest pass that they can hand off to a friend, so they can check out the game free of charge.

Tripwire Interactive previously said that they are committed to supporting their games with free additional content for many years after initial release, and Red Orchestra 2 will be no exception to that rule. There is more content already in the works for the game, as well as a new add-on for the game: Rising Storm, that will bring the Pacific Theater alive for Red Orchestra 2 players.

Red Orchestra 2 is available on Steam and many other digital outlets.

The modding and map making tools for Red Orchestra 2 is now available free to everyone that owns Red Orchestra 2. While the limited functionality preview versions of the SDK have been available to select modders for a while, this release now makes the full capabilities of the Mod SDK available to everyone. Users can now make and publish everything from simple mods and mutators, through custom maps and on to full total conversion mods.

Modders and map makers have been hard at work with the pre-release SDK and several great maps and mods are already coming together. For a preview of what is to come, check out these three total conversion mods already in production for Red Orchestra 2:

Rising Storm - http://www.risingstormgame.com/
In Country Vietnam - http://www.incountrymod.com/
Iron Europe - http://www.ironeuropegame.com/

The Mod SDK is available to download from Steam and is completely free to anyone that owns Red Orchestra 2. Just go to the tools tab in Steam and install the SDK.

Tripwire Interactive have today announced the opening of the sign-ups for its knockout tournament "Scorched Earth". This is the first competitive tournament for Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad and Tripwire Interactive is putting up $8,000 for the winning team and $4,000 for the second place team.

"Scorched Earth" is a knockout tournament for Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad, played in the Countdown gametype. The tournament will run through rounds of matches, held between clans in a US division and a European division, with the winners of each division playing a Grand Final (USA vs EU) on servers on both sides of the Atlantic. All tournament servers will be provided by Gaming Deluxe for Europe and NFO Servers for the US.

For the full details and to sign your clan up, head over to Scorched Earth sign-up page at: http://www.forgottenhonor.com/scorchedearth/clan-presignups.html

After opening up the Red Orchestra Beta with 3 maps (Fallen Fighters, Apartments and Gumrak) last week, Tripwire Interactive are now set to add an additional 3 new multiplayer maps to the beta later today.

The new maps include:

• Grain Elevator - the iconic battle site ichestran the south of Stalingrad featuring long range infantry fighting outdoors and room to room close quarters combat inside. 
• Red October Factory - night-time fighting in the factory ruins on an epic scale with infantry and tanks fighting side by side. 
• Barracks - a mix of close-quarter and medium-range combat, sure to be a fan favorite All 3 maps will have both Territory and Countdown game modes, while Barracks also has the Firefight mode.

Anyone that pre-purchases the deluxe edition before the game launches on September 13th will gain instant access to the beta. Also gamers who bought the standard version of the game can now upgrade directly to the Deluxe version to get straight into the Beta. More details can be fount at the Steam store page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/35450/

The beta for Red Orchestra is now live for gamers who have pre-purchased the Deluxe version of Red Orchestra 2.

The first phase of the pre-purchase beta will include 3 levels from the game running the 3 gametypes - Firefight, Countdown, and Territory. From the open destroyed cityscape of Fallen Fighters, to the close quarters combat of Apartments, and the wide open tank battles of Gumrak - the beta gives players a sample of the diverse action Red Orchestra 2 has to offer.

In a first for a game of this kind, Tripwire Interactive will be allowing individual server admins as well as GSP's to host ranked servers for the game.

Anyone that pre-purchases the deluxe edition on Steam before the game launches on September 13th will get instant access to the beta.

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad for the PC has been shifted back two weeks and will now launch on September 13th, the game was originally due for an August 30th launch date. Tripwire Interactive says the game will be delayed due to the game receiving an extra 'polish' before it is finally launched.

'While we understand the fans are clamoring to get their hands on the game, we felt we needed the extra two weeks to get it right and add the extra polish the game (and the players) deserve', said Tripwire Interactive.