UPDATE:

After half a day, Grinding Gear Games was able to fix the following connectivity issues. You can now log in and play POE2.

Original Article

Yesterday, Grinding Gear Games released Path of Exile 2 in Early Access. However, five whole hours after its EA launch, the game remains a broken mess. What’s laughable is that it has “Mostly Positive” reviews on Steam, even though 90% of gamers can’t even play it.

Let’s start from the beginning. When Path of Exile 2 launched, it had major network/online issues. Players could not connect to any server for over three hours. While attempting to log in, players were receiving an “unexpected error” message.

Prior to the game’s launch, GGG claimed that there would be long queues this weekend for POE2. However, they didn’t say anything about not being able to launch the game at all.

The big question is now why GGG did not launch an Open Beta so that it could fix any possible connectivity issues. Why did it launch the game immediately in Early Access? And yes, that was a rhetorical question. We all know the answer to this. Money, money, moneymoneymoney.

After those three hours, the devs were able to solve the “unexpected error”, and that opened another can of worms. Right now, you can’t create a new Path of Exile account and you cannot link your Steam account. When you try to create a new account, the game tells you that you haven’t purchased an Early Access key… even if you already have one.

Some suggest that you need to link your Steam account with the newly created POE account. This is something that the game does not tell you at any stage. Not only that but the official website for Path of Exile is down for maintenance.

Again, I totally understand that this is an Early Access release. However, these are fundamental and major issues. And, even when the devs manage to somehow fix this Steam account issue, players will also have to wait long queue times.

What’s also hilarious is the fact that Path of Exile 2 has “Mostly Positive” reviews on Steam, even though it’s completely broken. This shows how biased a lot of PC gamers really are. It also gives a completely false impression about the game in its current state. This is why you shouldn’t take Steam’s reviews seriously. Because, if this was any other game, it would have “Mostly Negative” reviews. In fact, if this was a game from EA or Ubisoft, it would have “Overwhelmingly Negative” reviews.

I’m certain that by the end of the weekend, Grinding Gear Games will have addressed some of these issues. However, this is a disastrous launch. It’s worse than Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, Cyberpunk 2077, STALKER 2. It’s even worse than Diablo 4. And that says a lot!