Developer and publisher Grinding Gear Games has announced that Path of Exile 2‘s upcoming Early Access release will be pushed back to December.
Originally intended to launch in mid-November, the game’s Early Access launch will now take place on December 6th, per an announcement on the Path of Exile 2 Steam page earlier today.
While you’d be forgiven for thinking the delay is for the usual reasons (polish, ensuring it’s the best it can be, et cetera), that actually doesn’t seem to be the case; rather, it’s the server infrastructure surrounding Path of Exile 2 that’s the culprit.
According to the aforementioned post, “a bunch of server side infrastructure work” is taking Grinding Gear “a lot longer than we expected”.
In essence, since the studio made the promise that microtransactions will work across both Path of Exile and Path of Exile 2 (despite the latter being a standalone game), a lot of work has to be done to ensure that promise can be kept.
Account systems for both games have to be integrated, and the console realms have to be considered as well, according to Grinding Gear. Everything has to be “perfect so that nobody loses anything they paid for, and nobody has their account broken”.
That’s why the game has been delayed, so hopefully, when it does arrive, the aforementioned features should be pretty smoothly implemented.
This isn’t the first time Path of Exile 2 has been delayed. It was originally intended to launch in June this year before being delayed back in March, after which the November date was announced during August’s Gamescom presentation.
When Path of Exile 2 does arrive in Early Access, it’ll land on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. You can check out our hands-on preview here if you want to know how this ARPG sequel is shaping up.
