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Grinding Gear Games’ highly-anticipated Action RPG Path of Exile 2 has been hit by a minor delay before heading into early access, even though the game itself is pretty much ready. An issue has arisen with server infrastructure which has turned out to be a lot more complex than the devs anticipated and Game Director Jonathan Rogers is taking full responsibility, saying in a heartfelt and honest video statement (which you can watch below), “This delay is on me—I simply didn’t leave enough time to get everything done. I’m genuinely sorry about this; it’s painful for all of us.”
Rogers looks upset at having to break the news, even though a delay of three weeks is not anything unusual these days. He does however recognize that Path of Exile 2 is the kind of game that people book time off work to play on launch and the apology seems extremely sincere, something that is not always the case in the games industry these days.
The statement in full reads:
“Hi, I’m Jonathan Rogers, game director on Path of Exile 2. Unfortunately, I have some bad news—we have to delay Early Access by three weeks. The new date is now December 6. I know this can be disappointing, especially since some people plan time off around our launches, but we really have no choice.
So, what happened? Surprisingly, the delay isn’t because of the game itself. Instead, it’s due to server-side infrastructure work that’s taken much longer than expected. One of our key promises was to ensure that all your microtransactions would work across both Path of Exile 1 and Path of Exile 2. To achieve this, we have to integrate account systems for both games, as well as for the console versions.
This integration has required a lot of changes. Not only have we had to build new systems, but we also need to ensure that all the old data remains compatible. When you start migrating databases that are as old and large as ours, you encounter all kinds of unexpected issues. For instance, we found cases where multiple accounts had the same name, email address, or even the same Steam ID. There are even accounts with random gibberish as their name that we can’t decode.
We have to get everything perfect to prevent any loss of items that players have paid for and ensure no account gets broken. Because of these backend changes, we also need to conduct extensive load testing. We need to make sure our systems can handle the huge number of players expected at launch.
Realistically, we might have been able to stick to the original launch date, but I’m no longer confident we could do so without risking mistakes. These aren’t the kind of mistakes we can afford to make. So, with that in mind, we’ve decided to delay.
This delay is on me—I simply didn’t leave enough time to get everything done. I’m genuinely sorry about this; it’s painful for all of us.
We’re planning a livestream in about four weeks to discuss the content you can expect in Path of Exile 2’s Early Access. Think of it as the biggest League announcement we’ve ever done. I’m looking forward to sharing details on the endgame content that the team has been working hard on.
Until then, thank you very much for your support.”
Even by watching just the start of the video, you can tell how upset Jonathan is at having to break this news – even though it is just a three-week delay. Sometimes it is easy to forget just how much the development teams put of their lives into their projects, only for often unwarranted criticism to be hurled their way.
So mark December 6th in your calendars and wait patiently, it’s not that different. It could be Life By You.
