Path of Exile 2's beta delayed from June 'until later in the year'

Path of Exile 2's witch
(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

We've had plenty of intriguing news about Path of Exile 2 today, like the combat having been reworked around a new control scheme and the announcement it will be sticking to its "ethical free-to-play" model. However, to pour a little ice water on the fire, here's one bit of not-so-great news: the beta previously announced for June 7 now won't be happening until late in the year.

Grinding Gear Games announced the news in a tweet that said, "while we think we would be able to get the game's content ready in time, we underestimated how long it will take to get gameplay polished to a standard we're happy with. We're still going to be doing alpha testing in June, but we are going to be delaying the beta until later in the year."

PC Gamer contributor Dominic Tarason just got to play a demo of Path of Exile 2 at a press event, where he came away with a lot of positive things to say. Like this: "From playing the first of six acts alone (the later ones seem to be even more fantastical), the variety of environments puts Diablo 4's samey overworld to shame." He did also mention a few things that suggest why the beta might have been delayed, calling the demo build "a bit crash prone" as well as noting persistent stutters.

Grinding Gear Games finished the announcement of the beta's delay by saying, "We don't have an exact date for you yet, but it should be towards the end of the year."

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.