Publishers and developers have been keeping a close eye on the Cyberpunk 2077 release date over the past 12 months. Why? They want to avoid releasing their titles at the same time. Now one developer has decided to delay their own expansion due to the latest Cyberpunk 2077 delay.
Update: Developer Rockfish has now also pushed back the release of Everspace 2 which was due to hit Steam Early Access in December. The Early Access version will now release in January.
Original Story: Grinding Gear Games has decided to delay the release of the next Path of Exile expansion. The latest update to the ARPG was supposed to release on 11 December. Now that Cyberpunk 2077 is coming out on 10 December, they have pushed their release right back to January next year.
Although the two games are nothing like each other, GGG is more than aware that when Cyberpunk 2077 does release, it’s going to have RPG fans locked in for a while. When new expansions for POE do come out, players usually flock to check out the new content and updates. GGG obviously feels that there is no benefit in competing for gamers’ attention by releasing at the same time. Grinding Gear Game’ CEO Chris Wilson is an avid gamer so perhaps he’s just wanting some time off to get immersed in Cyberpunk 2077 himself, not that he would ever say that of course 😉
With so much hype around Cyberpunk 2077, it could be a wise move because marketing is only going to ramp-up leading up to December 10th. The update from GGG reads:
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.
There appears to be a mixed response within the POE community. Some think it’s a great move while others think it’s uncalled for. Once things for sure, the Cyberpunk 2077 delay has shaken quite a few people over the past 24 hours.
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