Grinding Gears Games has made a monumental announcement, but there’s a good news bad news side to it.
They made the announcement on the official Twitter account:
“We’ve just reached 1 million Early Access redemptions. The support you have all shown for Path of Exile 2 Early Access is far beyond anything we could have ever predicted.
However we want to be upfront with you all and let you know there may very well be queues over the weekend.”
This tweet came with a message from the game’s director, Jonathan Rogers. To sum it up, while they’re excited about getting so many players who paid for Early Access, they didn’t expect them.
So, they did prepare additional servers to take on the challenge, but even then they aren’t sure if they prepared enough. So Rogers is simply asking for players to be patient as the weekend plays out.
Since Path of Exile 2’s launch in Early Access (yes, this is still Early Access) generated so much hype that Diablo franchise boss Rod Fergusson couldn’t help subposting about them, word of mouth spread on this action RPG that many fans enthuse about as being like Diablo, but much better.
The Path of Exile franchise’s reputation has been built on years of goodwill because of Grinding Gear Games’ pro-consumer, generous monetization. But with Path of Exile 2, they’re stepping up with a content plan and game design that can now genuinely give Diablo 4 a run for its money.
Path of Exile 2 hitting one million players just for Early Access is absolutely cause for celebration, but you can see why Rogers felt the need to talk to the players personally. Since Grinding Gears Games is an independent game company and not owned by mega-conglomerates like Microsoft, they would be far more vulnerable if things went sour. For example, if a controversy could prop up because they couldn’t prepare enough servers to attend to all their players at launch.
One of their players even illustrated the terrifying prospect in response to Grinding Gears Games’ message. A few hours before launch, they already have over 5000 players waiting on queue.
Another player illustrated what Grinding Gears Games saw themselves. 1 million players paying up for Early Access means they already made $ 30 million before the game could even be played. It must feel like vindication for the last 11 years of the franchise, and this could be the start of something bigger for them.
