Video Games

Path of Exile 2 release date pushed back to December 2024

A small delay to smooth things out for launch

Marco Wutz

Grinding Gear Games

Grinding Gear Games announced that the Path of Exile 2 release date has been changed to December 6, 2024, so around three weeks after the originally planned launch. The ARPG itself is coming along well, game director Jonathan Rodgers explained in a video message, but things such as “server side infrastructure work,” which is required for a smooth launch experience, “has taken us a lot longer than we expected.”

He went into detail, stating that account integration between Path of Exile 1 and 2, which needs to be done in order for microtransactions to work across both titles, necessitated creating new systems and ensuring backward compatibility. “When you start migrating databases that are this old and with this much data, you find all sorts of strange demons in there,” he said. “We have to get everything perfect so that nobody loses anything they paid for, and nobody has their account broken.”

Rodgers also mentioned that the studio is load-testing all the infrastructure to ensure that it will withstand the number of players it expects at launch.

He stated that he’s confident that the team could have made it to the finish line at the original date, but he’s “no longer confident we could do it without mistakes.” Rodgers took on the full responsibility for the delay, saying he should have left for time for this work in the first place.

Path of Exile fans are very supportive of the decision online, saying they’d rather have the title later than it being a messy launch. Given how much of an impact a bad launch can have on a game in the age of the review bomb, this seems to be a very prudent decision by the studio.

Path of Exile 2 is coming into Early Access on December 6, 2024, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.

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Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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