Path Of Exile Studio I pushed banners skipped the server queue and apologized

Path of Exile 2 is on the way, as content for the first game continues to be released. But the latest expansion, Ultimatum, was released this week and things didn’t go as planned. It was a mess, to say the least, with players stuck in server queues remaining unable to play. However, the issues were magnified, as Grinding Gear Games decided to let live creators skip the lines and start playing it right away.

How did you discover it EurogamerChris Wilson, producer of Stated Path of Exile I reddit the thread Ultimatum Challenge League, a risk / reward experimental game where players mainly compete against one another, allows players to enter very slowly. The “human error” resulted in the regular season not running and players continuing to be expelled from the game world until the Final Fix was completed a few hours later.

But why was the situation in Path of Exile different from the server issues that plagued a game like Outriders, for example? Well, because not everyone was affected. The paid banners brought on board by Grinding Gear Games were allowed to start immediately as they were supposed to run around for two hours. The team believed at the time that there was no doubt that the game would not be allowed.

“That was the next thing I could do to literally burn a huge pile of money,” Wilson said. “So we made a hasty decision to let these people cross the line.”

As you can imagine, promoting new content to your players through influencers is not very effective if you also make fun of their inability to play. The studio will not operate this kind of preferred treatment solution in the future, asserting that “most” signs will not ask them to.

Giving some guys the opportunity to hold themselves in front of others definitely doesn’t seem like the right move, regardless of whether or not you paid for them. However, based on Wilson’s comments, it appears the studio has learned a very valuable lesson in public intent and is unlikely to make the same mistake again.