According to Path of Exile 2 game director Jonathan Rogers, the team is not keen on requiring PS4 and PS5 players to have PlayStation Plus. While the Grinding Gear Games founder hopes this won’t become a requirement in the future, he couldn’t commit to that.
Rogers commented on the presence of a PS+ disclaimer on the PlayStation version of the recent cross-platform trailer during an interview with iGamesNews during Summer Game Fest 2024. While this trailer indicated that a subscription was required, this was not the case with the Xbox version.
Manage Cookie Settings
“so that […] That’s not what we want,” Rogers said. “I think it should be fine to not subscribe in the future, but I can’t commit to that because ultimately it’s one of those things that needs to be negotiated. I don’t think it should be required, but let’s see what happens.”
I then asked PlayStation players if they could expect additional in-game bonuses if they eventually have to pay a monthly fee to play Path of Exile 2 online, to which Rogers responded, “Ultimately I haven’t thought about that yet. We’ll have to see when that happens. But right now I’m hoping we can make it so people can play without a subscription. We’ll see.”
With cross-play and cross-progression, I also asked Grinding Gear Games if they could still deliver on their promise to keep microtransactions from Path of Exile 1 (which they share similarities to). This also seemed more complicated than the Path of Exile team would have liked.
“Maybe I shouldn’t go into too many details here, but we will do our best to get the purchases to move to the platforms. If that doesn’t happen, it’s because we have difficulties negotiating with the platforms. There are sometimes barriers between platform holders and people who want to do this.”
“Our policy is that we will do our best to continue this. I think on some platforms there will be no problem, and on others there will certainly be some compelling reasons to [needed]Rogers didn’t specify which platform owners were more lenient in this regard and which were more troublesome. He also couldn’t talk about the specific obstacles the team encountered here because he “suspected there were nondisclosure agreements involved.”
Rogers did make sure to point out, however, that if you’re one of those Path of Exile 1 players who wants to transfer your purchase to the same platform, this generally won’t be a problem. There are some hurdles when transferring games across platforms.
“Generally speaking, there is no problem with PoE 1 and PoE 2 running on the same platform, because the platform holders have no problem with it. But when it comes to cross-platform monetization, there are more problems. But like I said, we will do our best to make this happen.”
“Ultimately it depends on the policies of the platform holders.”
We’ve got a lot more to come from this interview and Summer Game Fest 2024 – so stay tuned for more previews and interviews in the coming days!
