Cyberpunk 2077's delay to December 10 isn't just having an effect on fans anxious to play CD Projekt Red's open world RPG. The three-week delay is now rippling out and affecting other games.
Path of Exile's 3.13 end-game expansion was planned for a release on December 11, and just last week developer Grinding Gear Games said the expansion was on track to hit that date "in a very stable and polished state."
But now that Cyberpunk 2077's release date has shifted to December 10 (moved from November 19), Grinding Gear Games is getting out of its way. Path of Exile's 3.13 expansion is being delayed from December 11 until sometime in January 2021.
"We do not want to put our players in a position of having to choose between these two games, so we have decided to step out of the way and delay the release of Path of Exile 3.13 until January," Grinding Gear Games CEO Chris Wilson wrote in a post on the PoE forums.
"We still expect to finish 3.13 by early/mid-December," Wilson continued. "The scope of this expansion will remain unchanged. During the month of delay before release, we will start work on the 3.14 expansion."
That's kind of an odd move, though I sort of get it. There will surely be lots of PoE players who want to dive into Cyberpunk 2077 the second it's released, so punting the PoE expansion a month down the road means they won't have to split their time or feel like they're missing out on either one game or the other.
But it also feels like a bit of a punishment for die-hard Exile fans who were ready for something new and now have to wait, even if the expansion is ready to go, especially if they're not planning to play Cyberpunk 2077. Reaction to forum post are mixed, as you'd expect, with some fans thanking Wilson and others pretty unhappy about the whole thing.
On the plus side, Path of Exile players will still get something in December. "So that you still have some interesting Path of Exile stuff to play over the Christmas/New Year break, we're planning to run at least one multi-week event (for example, Flashback)," wrote Wilson.
