A few days ago, Red 5 Studios CEO Mark Kern stated on the official Firefall forums that the game will be launching in December. To offer further clarification, Kern said in a follow-up letter to The Escapist that Firefall's expanded beta program will begin this month after PAX Prime and that the team feels the game has already launched. Here's Kern's explanation:

"To explain our launch process further. We already consider ourselves 'launched.' We will not have a traditional beta, open beta, launch process. We no longer feel this makes sense in a modern, online, service oriented business, especially a free2play game. Instead, we have modeled our launch after G-mail’s invite system.

The way this works is that we bring testers and content up in layers. As each layer proves itself out, we give our testers invite slots, which they are free to send to their fellow gamers. We use different criteria to decide when and to whom we release more invite slots. This process never stops, as it didn’t stop for G-mail for a very long time. It’s a great way to grow the game through people’s social networks, which is what we want for our team and clan oriented game."

So what happens in December? According to a new post regarding the whole beta process, Red 5 Studios said that's when they plan to open up the Firefall virtual item store and begin taking micro-transaction payments that will fund the game. It's also the point in time when they will perform the final character wipe to reset all players for the last time.

If you'd like to get into the beta (even though the game has "launched"), head over to the official Firefall site and sign up!