Grinding Gear Games has shared an unfortunate update about their big upcoming release, Path of Exile 2.
We last reported on this isometric action game all the way last August. Grinding Gear committed to Early Access dated to November 15, 2024. Today, Grinding Gear has revealed that they have delayed Early Access all the way to December 6, 2024.
As reported by Gematsu, the game itself will actually be ready to go. However, the studio hit a snag when it comes to updating their systems, and they feel obligated to delay delivering everything they promised.
So, here’s the issue. Grinding Gear promised players that all their purchases on the original Path of Exile can be carried over to Path of Exile 2. Unfortunately, they just realized that they aren’t sure that they have set up all their systems to guarantee that Early Access players will get access to that feature.
The game’s director, Jonathan Rogers, says that it is possible that they could have pushed forward with the Early Access schedule, and not run into any issues. However, the company didn’t want to risk it, and they are also particularly cautious about living up to their overwhelmingly positive reputation among their players. For these reasons, they chose to delay Early Access.
As we had alluded to how well-regarded Grinding Gear Games is by their own fans, they may have excused it if Path of Exile 2’s Early Access did run into launch issues. We think many of them will accept the company’s apologies now.
But this whole situation also looks like one of those completely avoidable issues. While we feel that the company is being too harsh in their self-assessment, we can understand where they are coming from.
We do wonder if the fans should have been asked if they would have rather gotten that chance to play the game early, foregoing that commitment for content carrying over. After all, this Early Access is not the same thing as the full retail release.
Fans also generally accept that they may become part of a game’s development when they enter that game’s Early Access period. And other issues may appear during Early Access that will also hamper the game, but Grinding Gear won’t catch without the community’s help.
So, we think Grinding Gear could have approached this in many different ways. Ultimately, what matters is they have everything lined up so that the game is complete enough to meet expectations when it finally gets officially released.
Path of Exile 2 will be released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, Epic Game Store, Windows Store, and Mac App Store.
