There was plenty of hype surrounding Grinding Gear Games’ newest League for Path of Exile, dubbed Betrayal. On top of featuring all new content, mechanics, and rewards, Betrayal would also see past Leagues being restructured and implemented into the core game. Despite server issues several hours after launch on December 7th, Betrayal was a big success.
According to co-founder and managing director of developers Grinding Gear Games Chris Wilson on the game’s official forums, Betrayal saw a peak concurrent player count of 188,970 users, of which 123,565 were from Steam itself. “This is 28% higher than our previous best-ever launch and is a record we’re planning to break again in the future,” said Wilson. He also noted that despite initial server issues, Betrayal was one of the company’s smoothest launches ever.
The development team isn’t done just yet, though it will have a smaller team looking over the title during the holidays. “Over the coming week, we’ll prioritize post-launch issues as they come in, alongside the development of 3.6.0 which will be released in March,” Wilson said. “In New Zealand it’s common for people to take a few weeks of summer holiday around Christmas/New Year, so we’ll be running a skeleton crew for the end of December and early January.”
Wilson also thanked the development team for their hard work, especially given the time frame within which Betrayal was created. He said: “To the rest of the Grinding Gear Games team: Thank you for your hard work over the last few weeks. Betrayal was a massive expansion to create in such a short time frame. Your attention to detail and commitment to quality really show in the final product. It’s an honour working with you.”
In addition to update 3.6.0, the developer is also working hard on the PS4 version of Path of Exile. Originally slated to launch alongside Betrayal, the port will now be releasing in February 2019.