Sid Meier, director of creative development at Firaxis Games, revealed last October that the studio would bring Civilization to Facebook with testing due to start "soon". It now looks like the beta has been delayed.

With the Facebook version the developer said it was exploring ways of “expanding the Civilization gameplay experience to include solo, competitive and cooperative play to take advantage of the uniqueness of social networks”.

“The game will offer everything you enjoy in Civ in a fully persistent environment - you can play as much as you like, whenever you like, and it’ll be free-to-play,” said Meier.

At the time of Civilization Network’s announcement in October 2009, the firm said that a closed beta for the game will launch “soon”, ahead of the title’s full release in 2010.

It now looks like the beta won’t happen until eight months after the project was unveiled, with Take-Two telling Variety that the beta isn’t expected until sometime in June.