• News

Path of Exile delays 3.13 expansion to make way for Cyberpunk 2077

Path of Exile isn't about to try and compete with the freight train known as Cyberpunk 2077, so its upcoming 3.13 expansion is being delayed by a month.

Ozzie Mejia

October 28, 2020 3:30 PM

3

The biggest news story of the week in the gaming world so far has been the latest delay for the highly-anticipated Cyberpunk 2077. If we've noticed a trend throughout 2020 in gaming, it's that a Cyberpunk launch date is usually followed by a number of games getting out of its way. This trend looks to hold true, as the team at Grinding Gear Games is essentially admitting that it can't compete with this juggernaut. On Wednesday, the team announced that Path of Exile's next expansion would be delayed by a month in order to accommodate Cyberpunk 2077's new release date.

Grinding Gear CEO Chris Wilson posted the following to the Path of Exile website:

We were previously targeting a launch date of December 11 for our 3.13 end-game expansion. As we discussed last week, our new development methodology gives us confidence that we'd be able to hit this date with a high quality expansion. Yesterday, CD Projekt Red announced that Cyberpunk 2077 will now be released on December 10. 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.

We still expect to finish 3.13 by early/mid-December. The scope of this expansion will remain unchanged. During the month of delay before release, we will start work on the 3.14 expansion.

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). We'll confirm details of these event(s) once we have put together a plan.

While this delay will hopefully not affect our development schedule, it will probably cause our release schedule to change a little bit during 2021. We'll post details about this as soon as we have more information about these dates and when we'll be announcing 3.13.

In the meantime, let's all get out our Albino Rhoa Feathers and pray to Kuduku that they don't delay again.

Wilson previously noted back during the Harvest expansion reveal that COVID-19 had affected Path of Exile's development slightly, but with New Zealand tackling the pandemic in such an efficient manner, Wilson later stated that development was fully back on track. It's currently unknown whether this new delay will drastically affect Path of Exile going forward or whether it will have any effect at all on the upcoming Path of Exile 2 or Path of Exile Mobile.

Shacknews has been checking in with Grinding Gear on a regular basis, most recently getting details on Path of Exile's Heist update. We'll stand by our Zoom machines and wait to hear about what's next for the dungeon crawler. Stay tuned to Shacknews for the latest news on both Path of Exile and Cyberpunk 2077.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?