Path of Exile dev responds to backlash over catastrophic Ultimatum expansion launch • Eurogamer.net

Path of Exile is currently embroiled in a controversy sparked by the catastrophic launch of a new expansion and a backlash against the preferential treatment given to streamers.

Last night, the popular action role-playing game launched the Ultimatum expansion. Here, players risk items for coveted rewards in increasingly difficult events.

There is an element of competition here, those who hit the highest cards are expected to dominate the gaming economy first over the next few months. These players would also win the lead in the fight for extremely valuable rewards given to those who finish at the top of the ladder.

But Ultimatum suffered a disastrous launch that kept people from playing. “This launch has been difficult, to say the least,” lead developer Chris Wilson said in an article on the Path of Exile subreddit.

According to Wilson, immediately after the league was launched, the queue started to run incredibly slowly – so slowly that it would take at least two hours for everyone to participate in the game. Why? There was a “human error” which meant that a major “hold migration” process was not performed, causing “unbearable” slowness in clearing the queue.

Grinding Gear Games completely disabled the migration, which fixed the issue with the queue speed of around an hour, but at that point, “the realm panicked” and emptied most of the players. , then continued to do this about every 10 minutes or so for the rest of the day.

“It wasn’t good. At all,” Wilson said. “As well as catastrophically ruining our launch day, it completely mystified us because we were so careful with the changes to the kingdom’s infrastructure.”

This issue persists, although Grinding Gear Games is currently trying to resolve the issue.

“We will continue to work on this issue until the servers are functioning perfectly,” Wilson said. “We know the realm of Path of Exile can take so much load, it’s just a matter of guessing what subtle bullshit is causing the problem today.”

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Amidst all of this, Grinding Gear Games allowed streamers to bypass the slow queue, enraging the wider Path of Exile community.

Wilson offered an explanation for this, revealing that the developer paid streamers to play Ultimatum for a few hours at launch, and if they couldn’t play due to server issues, “That was pretty much as close as possible literally setting a big pile of money on fire. “

“The backstory is that we’ve been doing some proper paid influencer marketing recently, and that involves getting some great streamers to pitch Path of Exile to their audiences, for money (they’ve got #ad in their titles), ”Wilson explained.

“We had arranged to pay for two hours of streaming, and we ended up in a connection queue that would take two hours to clear. It was about as close as I could get to setting a big pile of money on fire. So we made the hasty decision to allow these streamers to bypass the queue. Most streamers didn’t ask for it and shouldn’t be held responsible for what happened. We also allowed other streamers who weren’t involved in the campaign to skip the queue as well so they wouldn’t be on the back foot. “

Wilson admitted that this decision was a “mistake”.

“The decision to allow streamers to bypass the queue was clearly a mistake,” he said.

“Instead of offering viewers something to watch while they waited, it offended all of our players who were eager to get into the game and were unable to, while still having to watch others enjoy. of that freedom. It is quite understandable that many players have been. We tell people that the debut of the Path of Exile league is a level playing field for everyone, and we need to make sure that it is. is reality.

“We will not allow streamers to bypass the connection queue in the future. Instead, we’re going to make sure the queue works a lot better so it’s a quick process for everyone and still a level playing field. We will also plan future marketing campaigns with contingencies. in order to better manage this kind of situation in the future.

“It is completely understandable that many players are not happy with how today has unfolded on several fronts. This article is not intended to try to convince you to be happy with “These results. We just want to give you an overview of what happened, why it happened, and what we’re going to do in the future. We’re also very unhappy with that.”

The Ultimatum expansion is set to launch for console versions of Path of Exile on April 21. Grinding Gear Games hopes it fixes all server issues by then.