Path Of Exile 3.13 Update Delayed To Avoid Cyberpunk 2077

Earlier this week, Cyberpunk 2077 was delayed for a third time, with CD Projekt Red moving the game's release date from November 19th to December 10th. As a result of this delay, Grinding Gear Games – the developer behind famed free-to-play action RPG Path of Exile – has decided to announce a delay of its own. The company has announced that the release of Path of Exile 3.13 will be moved from December to January to avoid the release of Cyberpunk 2077.

For those who have never played Path of Exile before, Grinding Gear Games typically keeps a pretty tight schedule when it comes to releasing updates. Typically, the company releases new seasonal leagues every three months or so, and following September's release of the 3.12 Heist league, version 3.13 was slated to go live in December – specifically, Grinding Gear Games says it was targeting a release date of December 11th for Path of Exile 3.13.

That is precisely one day after Cyberpunk 2077's new release date, and in a post to the Path of Exile forums, Grinding Gear Games explained that it didn't want to make Path of Exile players choose between playing Cyberpunk 2077 or starting the new league on launch day. "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," the developer said.

GGG said that it still plans to finish working on Path of Exile 3.13 by early or mid-December and that the scope of the expansion will stay the same despite this delay. The company expects to begin working on 3.14 during the month between what was 3.13's original release date and its new January release, and that it plans to run at least one multi-week event – Flashback is mentioned as a possibility – to give players something to do over the Christmas and New Year break.

The developer wraps up its forum post by saying that while this delay probably won't affect its development schedule moving forward, it will probably shake up its release schedule for 2021. No solid release date was given of Path of Exile 3.13, but hopefully we'll hear something on that front once we're into December.

It isn't a huge surprise to see Grinding Gear Games delay Path of Exile 3.13 so the new league doesn't have to compete with attention for Cyberpunk 2077, but the big question now is whether or not the delays are done for Cyberpunk and CD Projekt Red. Most of us figured that the delays were over when Cyberpunk 2077 went gold earlier this month, only for it to get a surprise delay after the fact. Here's hoping that Cyberpunk 2077 can actually stick to that December 10th release date.