It's been about 18 months since benchmarking software company Futuremark announced their plans to launch a game dev team, Futuremark Games Studio. In August 2008, they officially announced their first title, the zero-g space themed first person shooter Shattered Horizon. Today, after months of closed beta testing, the company announced that the game would finally be released as a digital download title on November 4 via Steam or directly from the game's official web site.

The price for the multiplayer only, DirectX10 exclusive title will be $19.99 but from now until the release date people can pre-order the game for 10 percent off that price. In another bonus, folks who pre-order the game will get the chance to test out upcoming level packs for Shattered Horizon before the game's other owners. Those level packs will be free to download when publicly released.

And in another seemingly sly dig at a certain other developer, Futuremark's press release seemed to go out of its way to mention the game's support for dedicated multplayer servers, saying, "Shattered Horizon allows PC gamers to choose who and how they want to play through dedicated servers run by the community. Futuremark Games Studio will host dedicated servers for North America, Europe and Australia and New Zealand at launch with the server code being made available to everyone shortly afterwards. " Ouch.