Visceral has announced Battlefield Hardline will soon get a community test environment, similar to that used for Battlefield 4, in which PC players can get early access to new patches, features and the like.
The CTE will launch at some point in May, and the first update set for community testing is one of Hardline's new maps, coming as a part of the Criminal Activity expansion. Info on the signup process will be posted on the Hardline newsfeed, so keep half an eye on that next month.
Along with the announcement of the CTE, Visceral has also released the first patch for Hardline - and yes, it's the 1.02 patch that nerfs the couch. Sad times. But it also has a lot of good fixes, like team deathmatch spawn fixes to weapons tuning and a lot of other things you can read about on the official post here.
My favourite fix has to be that for the Chinese EULA, which originally referred to a different game. Imagining the cries of EA execs as they realised the license agreement was unenforceable will get me through the rest of the day, I'd think.
