Path of Exile addresses messy Ultimatum launch, says giving streamers queue priority was a mistake

In a week that should be full of heady excitement for Path of Exile players, thanks to the release of the Ultimatum league, the mood has taken a turn for the worse due to a messy rollout and a decision to cater to prominent streamers over the rest of the playerbase, which has royally ticked off regular players.

Grinding Gear Games addressed the mess in a new post, saying, “The decision to allow any streamers to bypass the queue was clearly a mistake. 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 weren’t able to, while instead having to watch others enjoy that freedom.” The studio vowed to not repeat this decision in the future.

As for the technical issues, including server instability, the studio said that an error on its part caused a super-slow queue and kept ejecting players from the game. This problem resulted in, as Grinding Gear said, “catastrophically ruining [that] launch day.” Fortunately, the issue has since been identified and corrected.