Path of Exile 2 had to be postponed at short notice – and that was a costly affair. The game director now provides further background and details about the decision.
At a preview event, game director Jonathan Rogers commented on the short-term postponement of Path of Exile 2. As is well known, the action-RPG hopeful was delayed again by three weeks and now further background information has been made public.
According to Rogers, the development team underestimated the time required to merge the realms of the first Path of Exile with those of the sequel. “That was very unfortunate because it doesn't seem like something like that should really be able to delay a major release,” Rogers said. In the end it was like that.
Ironically, it was actually finished earlier: “The irony is that the work is now basically done and I think we could have even met the original release date. But it was just too close and it looked too risky so we felt we had to postpone it.”
The development team was still happy about the step because they simply had more time for fine-tuning and bug fixes. Nevertheless, Rogers sticks to his guns: The reasons for the release postponement were of a technical nature on the back-end servers and had nothing to do with the game itself.
At the same time, the release postponement was also quite an expensive affair. All marketing for the title was booked, server capacities were blocked and essentially have to be paid for for a month without actual use. The additional cost of releasing it three weeks later would certainly be over a million dollars. Nevertheless, they accepted this before they got off to a disastrous start due to ongoing technical problems.
Path of Exile 2 is now scheduled to launch on December 6, 2024.
Path of Exile 2 goes into early access on November 15th – at least that's what the trailer says.
