AION 2 Global Playtest: How to Request Access on Steam

As of September 1, 2026, the purchase column on the French Steam page for AION 2 no longer opens with the pre-order. It now opens with a box titled “Join AION 2 Playtest”, followed by an explanatory sentence and a green “Request Access” button. The “Release Date: Oct 5, 2026” block and the “Pre-order — AION 2 Standard Founder's Pack” button come only after that, further down in the same column.

This is the entry point for the pre-launch test on September 17 and 18, announced by NC on Steam on Wednesday, August 26, 2026 at 8:52 p.m. UTC, i.e. 10:52 p.m. in Paris — this is our conversion, as Steam timestamps its announcements in universal time. We covered this schedule on August 27, quoting the publisher's wording as is: “no key, invite, or sign-up required.” The store page, however, does ask for something. Here is exactly what.

What the Steam page displays, word for word

Below the box's title, a single line of text: “Request access and you will be notified when the development team is ready to accept more people.” Then the button. The English version of the page says the same thing: this is the wording of the Steam interface, with the app's name inserted into it, not a sentence written by NC.

The button does not trigger any download. It calls a confirmation function to which Steam passes an “open playtest” flag set to false. Direct consequence: a second window appears before the request is sent, its text reading “AION 2 Playtest — Click below to confirm your request to join. You will receive an email when the development team accepts more people.”, with two buttons, “Request Access” and “Cancel.”

Third point, the one that will trip up the most people: the script first checks whether an account is logged in. If not, it displays “You must be logged into Steam to request access to this playtest.” and redirects to the login page. A Steam account is therefore essential to activate this button, even though the test requires neither a key nor a sign-up form.

Two possible responses, and why NC isn't caught out

The page's script provides for two outcomes to the request. The first displays “Access Granted” followed by “Welcome to the playtest.”; the second displays “Request Sent” followed by “Your request to join has been received.”. In the first case, access is immediate and the page offers to launch the test application directly.

Nothing therefore allows us to claim that access would be selective. The interface's wording is governed by a technical flag on Steam's side; the server, meanwhile, may very well grant access within the second. What NC writes in its August 26 announcement, on the “Accessibility” line of the “Information” table — “Open to everyone: no key, invite, or sign-up required” — remains compatible with this behavior. We were not able to verify the server's actual response, and so we are not writing that we did.

What we can confirm comes down to three points: there is one step before receiving the test client, it requires a logged-in Steam account, and the interface announces an acceptance by the development team. This is the precision missing from our August 27 article, which had stuck to the press release.

AION 2 Playtest: a Steam application in its own right

The August 26 announcement ends with an unambiguous invitation — "Ready to take part in the pre-launch test?" — and a link to app 4972320. This identifier isn't the game's, which carries the number 3393110: it designates a separate app, named AION 2 Playtest, whose address redirects to the main store page, for lack of its own content to display.

The two pages look a lot alike — same categories, same genres, same developer — without being identical. Recorded on September 1, 2026:

Two practical consequences follow. The test client installs as a separate game in the library, hence NC's instruction that "Steam players must uninstall the test app and download AION 2 separately to take part in the early access on September 30", while players going through the PURPLE launcher have "no additional steps to take". Second, this page inherits the game's tags, including "In-App Purchases", even though the announcement specifies that the Store, Luna, Passes, subscriptions, and payment portals will be disabled during the test: a metadata artifact, not a contradiction from the publisher.

Ten declared languages instead of eight

The strangest difference between the two pages lies elsewhere: in the list of supported languages. The game declares eight, the test client declares ten. We reread both pages in French and English to rule out a localization error; the gap is identical. On Steam, the asterisk marks languages with full audio support, meaning voice-over, not text translation.

Let's be clear about the status of this information: it is our observation based on two store pages, not an announcement from NC. The publisher has not communicated on the linguistic content of the test client, nor on an extension of the game's language list. A language file embedded in a test build proves nothing on its own: it may reflect a shared development base, a preparation step, or a simple leftover. We draw no conclusion from this about a release in China, and we invite you to do the same.

The rest of the page as of September 1st

Below the test block, the French page shows the same sequence as before: "Release date: Oct 5, 2026", the mention "This game is planned to be released in 4 weeks", a banner reading "Early Access — Starts Sept 30", then the pre-order for the AION 2 Standard Founder's Pack. The English version says exactly the same thing. No Steam announcement has been published by NC since the one on August 26th.

A vocabulary correction, since this pack is back in the news because of the test: its contents include what NC calls, in French, the "Adhésion spéciale Quairerk", a label present in the July 22nd announcement as well as in the table header of the August 21st one. Our August 21st article wrote "Abonnement Quairerk spécial": the official label is indeed "Adhésion spéciale Quairerk" [Special Quairerk Membership]. These items, the August 26th announcement specifies, will in any case not be available during the test.

On the video side, the official channel — AION 2 Official, verified via YouTube's oEmbed interface — has posted two new videos, at Paris times which we converted from the YouTube timestamp. On Wednesday, August 26, 2026 at 8:37 PM, Road to Global Launch, five minutes of behind-the-scenes footage: the video shows no subtitles written by NC, only an automatically generated Korean track, which prevents quoting any of its content. On Monday, August 31, 2026 at 9:01 PM, Gamescom 2026 Cinematic Trailer (Original Soundtrack Version), 90 seconds: the edit already shown at Opening Night Live, re-cut with the game's original soundtrack.

Key takeaways

For those planning to play on September 17th and 18th, the only useful action to date comes down to three steps: open the French Steam page for AION 2, log into your account, click on "Request Access" then confirm in the dialog box. The response is immediate: access granted, or request put on a waiting list via email.

Two caveats to close. The test client is a separate application that will need to be uninstalled before downloading the game for the September 30th early access — NC states this in black and white. And the language discrepancy between the two pages remains, at this stage, a curiosity noted by us on Valve's store, without the slightest comment from the publisher to explain it.