Electronic Arts Inc. announced today that PC gamers worldwide can now play Medal of Honor. For just three days – until October 7 at 11:59pm PDT – EA has pre-released a portion of the Medal of Honor multiplayer game, allowing thousands of players worldwide to see the unforgiving Afghanistan terrain and to use true to life weapons.

The Open Beta also allows the development team to load-test the multiplayer servers to ensure easy connectivity and a smooth play experience when the game launches on October 12. Gamers can download the Open Beta today at www.medalofhonor.com/pcopenbeta*.

The PC Multiplayer Open Beta goes live just days after EA announced that the opposing team in Medal of Honor multiplayer has been renamed Opposing Force (OPFOR). The change applies only to the name of the opposing team in multiplayer -- the gameplay, environments, characters models and weapons have not changed. No changes have been made to the single-player game.

The team name “Taliban” was removed out of respect for the families of serving, veteran and fallen U.S. Soldiers. To further honor the troops, EA is giving back to several charities including Give Back 10, The Mission Continues and Adopt-a-Soldier. As the list of organizations EA supports continues to grow, visit www.medalofhonor.com/giveback to learn more.

It seems a bit one-sided, remove the actual name of one real-life faction but maintain that of another. Honestly, it looks to me like they obviously didn’t think it through as all they could come up with was Opposing Force which is quite generic all around. Almost makes it sound like it’s now the US against the world.

I don’t condone terrorism or killing in any form, so don’t bother attacking me on those grounds. But if you’re going to make a change to a game based on a real-world situation, then perhaps you should have thought about it before you made the game and certainly should have put more thought into it along the way. This must surely be in response to some pressure the company has received, perhaps even from the US Government and Military. Otherwise, why stick with the name all the way up until just before the game is set to release? Worse yet, it could just be a PR stunt and that’s far more disrespectful to everyone in the end. Perhaps they should donate all proceeds from the game to a worldwide organization that works for peace.