Developer and publisher Tripwire Interactive today announced that the highly anticipated next chapter in the studio's legendary Killing Floor franchise, Killing Floor 3, will launch worldwide on March 25, 2025 for PC (via Steam and Epic Games Store), the PlayStation 5 system, and the Xbox Series X|S console systems. Tripwire also announced that pre-orders are now available for both retail and digital versions, along with detailing pricing, pre-order bonuses, and exclusive content across both standard and special editions. Digital pre-orders for PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, and retail pre-orders for console versions are live now. Digital pre-orders for console versions will be opening soon, with specific timing and updates available via Tripwire socials. In celebration, Tripwire has revealed the next in its series of Zed reveal videos, focused on the new and deadly Siren.

Like Zeds, Killing Floor 3 editions will come in many shapes and sizes between both digital and retail. All digital and retail pre-orders will include the limited timed exclusive Flatline Tactical Bundle (Flatliner weapon skin, Fear the Reaper trinket, and Special Action Force player card).

Comcast is introducing the first customers in the world to a pioneering new, ultra-low lag connectivity experience when they use interactive applications like gaming, videoconferencing, and virtual reality. With the launch, Xfinity Internet latency will be dramatically reduced to faster than the blink of an eye, currently when using FaceTime on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro, apps on Meta's mixed reality headsets that will support this technology, NVIDIA's GeForce NOW, many games on Valve's Steam games platform, and in the future on other applications that choose to leverage this open standard technology.

"Our connectivity is the key to unlocking a world of entertainment, sports, news and information and we're constantly pushing the limits of network innovation to create an experience that exceeds the expanding demands of our customers," said Emily Waldorf, Senior Vice President, Consumer Products, Comcast Connectivity and Platforms. "Modern applications are real-time and interactive and require more than just fast speeds. Xfinity Internet's lower lag times will be a differentiator for Comcast."

Cue the iconic FINAL FANTASY fanfare because we can confirm that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is officially Steam Deck Verified! Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun da duuuuun! That means upon launch on January 23, you'll be able to play the critically acclaimed RPG on a train, on a plane, swaddled up in bed, in the bathroom… wherever you want. It's fine - we won't judge.

Of course, you can also play on your desktop, where depending on your rig you'll be able to benefit from frame rates of up to 120 FPS and a range of visual enhancements, including refined lighting, improved environment detail, more detailed textures. You'll also potentially be able to experience enhanced framerates and image quality with NVIDIA DLSS. VRR is also supported. You can get a sense of the PC enhancements in the new trailer (below), and check out our previous article for more details.

The journey begins now: Assetto Corsa EVO Early Access is live on Steam! Imagine sitting behind the wheel of your dream car, the engine roaring, with the track stretching out before you. Feel the changing light as you accelerate, the road alive beneath your tires. This isn't just a game—it's the start of your driving journey.

For the next two weeks, until January 30th, join Assetto Corsa EVO Early Access at 20% off. By joining now, you'll receive all the content featured in version 1.0 for free. This is your chance to be part of the game's evolution at the lowest price of the entire EA program—immerse yourself in every thrilling lap and turn while shaping the future of the game.

Hyper Light Breaker, a new 3D indie platformer we reported on previously has finally launched to early access on Steam, and despite the surprising success of its predecessors, Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash, Hyper Light Breaker isn't looking like the break-out indie hit of the month. While the game has garnered a solid 5,230 peak concurrent players just five hours after launch, the Steam reviews are hardly anything to write home about so far.

According to SteamDB, Hyper Light Breaker has a review rating of just 35.5%, with 31.4% of the reviews giving the game a positive rating, while 68.6% of Steam reviewers gave it a negative score. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, it looks like most of the issues with Hyper Light Breaker stem from the game's early access status. Early reviews on Steam report that the game's core mechanics and gameplay loop are satisfying, but that the game, overall, seems like it needs more time in the oven. Some of the more serious complaints when it comes to Hyper Light Breaker relate to the game's combat being somewhat difficult to grasp, progression feeling unsubstantial, initial difficulty being too high, and a steep learning curve. Others pointed out that there appears to be a lot of missing content. That said, as some reviewers have pointed out, the game is in early access. If we look at the likes of Windblown—or No Man's Sky for an example on a longer timeframe—it's easy to see the value in an early access period and community feedback. If Heart Machine, the developer behind Hyper Light Breaker, uses its community feedback properly and implements fixes to issues as they arise, it seems like it could be a game enjoyed by many indie gamers.

Today Airborne Empire finally takes flight and is live on Steam! We—at the Wandering Band—are super excited for players to get their hands on the game, to celebrate there will be a 10% discount on the game for a limited time. While we celebrate this milestone today we know there is much more to come. We plan on working on the game for at least a year (most likely a little longer) and we've posted a very early + rough roadmap below.

Right now it's just a list of things we plan on doing. The idea is to expand on this roadmap with your input. We have a big game with a lot of cool features, we're happy with what we have, but our goal is to make something great. We need your help; we need to know what you like, what you don't like and what types of additional content you want to see. If you would like to provide feedback, or discuss the game with the team directly, please join us on our Discord. If you find a bug while playing the game please report it with the in-game bug reporting tool (in the pause screen).

This GFN Thursday recaps the latest cloud announcements from the CES trade show, including GeForce RTX gaming expansion across popular devices such as Steam Deck, Apple Vision Pro spatial computers, Meta Quest 3 and 3S, and Pico mixed-reality devices. Gamers in India will also be able to access their PC gaming library at GeForce RTX 4080 quality with an Ultimate membership for the first time in the region. This follows expansion in Chile and Columbia with GeForce NOW Alliance partner Digevo. More AAA gaming is on the way, with highly anticipated titles DOOM: The Dark Ages and Avowed joining GeForce NOW's extensive library of over 2,100 supported titles when they launch on PC later this year. Plus, no GFN Thursday is complete without new games. Get ready for six new titles joining the cloud this week.

Head in the Clouds
CES 2025 is coming to a close, but GeForce NOW members still have lots to look forward to. Members will be able to play over 2,100 titles from the GeForce NOW cloud library at GeForce RTX quality on Valve's popular Steam Deck device with the launch of a native GeForce NOW app, coming later this year. Steam Deck gamers can gain access to all the same benefits as GeForce RTX 4080 GPU owners with a GeForce NOW Ultimate membership, including NVIDIA DLSS 3 technology for the highest frame rates and NVIDIA Reflex for ultra-low latency.

With Lenovo's announcement at CES 2025 of the Lenovo Legion Go S, we are pleased to share that their "Powered by SteamOS" model is the first handheld officially licensed to ship with Valve's SteamOS. We built this operating system to provide a seamless user experience optimized for gaming, while retaining access to the power and flexibility of a PC. SteamOS is the same operating system we run on Steam Deck, and the team is making updates to ensure it fully supports the Lenovo Legion Go S and provides the same seamless experience customers expect.

In addition, the same work that we are doing to support the Lenovo Legion Go S will improve compatibility with other handhelds. Ahead of Legion Go S shipping, we will be shipping a beta of SteamOS which should improve the experience on other handhelds, and users can download and test this themselves. And of course we'll continue adding support and improving the experience with future releases.

Every year, Valve holds The Steam Game Awards, a community-driven initiative to recognize the best games that were launched in that year. Valve has just released the results for the 2024 Steam Game Awards, which are determined by community vote—as opposed to events like The Game Awards, which feature a jury selection—and split into individual categories. This year, though, the overall winner for Game of the Year was Black Myth Wukong, which beat out other finalists: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, Balatro, and Helldivers 2 for top spot. Game of the Year wasn't Wukong's only victory, either, with the game also taking home the "Outstanding Story-Rich Game Award," which seems logical given its overall victory, and the cleverly named "Best Game You Suck At Award," which is meant to highlight the best difficult game of the year. In this category, Black Myth Wukong was up against Dragon Ball Z Sparkling Zero, The Finals, Ghost of Tsushima, and Tekken 8, which is again a very diverse mix of games and genres, so it's somewhat interesting to see a narrative-driven game like Wukong come out ahead here.

The rest of the Steam Game Awards 2024 was less of a one-man show, with Metro Awakening VR taking Best VR Game of the Year, Elden Ring nabbing the Labor of Love Award, and God of War Ragnarök taking the Best Game on Steam Deck Award. Helldivers 2 won Better with Friends, while Silent Hill 2 took home the Outstanding Visual Style Award, Liar's Bar won Most Innovative Gameplay, Red Dead Redemption won Best Soundtrack Award, and Farming Simulator 25 was crowned with the Sit Back and Relax award, beating out the likes or Webfishing, House Flipper 2, and Tiny Glade. One of the more surprising "minor" awards winners here is God of War Ragnarök taking home Best Game on Steam Deck, since you often hear in discourse around the Steam Deck that it's not suitable for AAA gaming, and God of War is only two years old at the time of writing, meaning it is still very demanding, with an NVIDIA GTX 1060 6 GB quoted as the minimum recommended GPU to play the game.

A new security breach is trying to pump the brakes on Path Of Exile 2's overwhelmingly positive late 2024 launch, as a mysterious hack appears to be making the rounds in the new RPG, although the source of the vulnerability is yet to be identified. According to a growing number of posts on the Path of Exile 2 forum, subreddit, and even the game's Steam reviews, players are apparently logging into their PoE 2 accounts only to find that all their loot and gear they've now spent dozens or even hundreds of hours grinding for, has been removed from their accounts. The most alarming thing is that nobody seems to know how these hacks are happening. Some players say they changed their main email address and Steam login passwords days before they were hacked, and most seem to have no Steam 2FA requests, suggesting that there is either a security issue with the Path of Exile 2 game servers or there is some sort of session hijacking happening that is giving bad actors access to player accounts.

Until now, Grinding Gear Games, the developer behind Path of Exile 2, has not openly commented on the hacking incidents, with a single comment from the support team on the forum advising players to email support about it if they encounter such instances. According to the Steam review mentioning an account hacking incident, however, the player managed to track down the hacker on his own, subsequently contacted support and posted about it in the PoE 2 forum, and asked the moderator to assist in preventing the sale of the rest of his goods. This attempt was apparently enough to get the gamer's forum posts removed and put on probation. Meanwhile, the support request was met even more unkindly, with PoE 2 support going so far as to lock him out of his own account. He also isn't alone, with others in the Path of Exile 2 forum reporting that sharing the in-game name of their alleged hacker with support has led to their game account being locked.

The Xbox gaming handheld is reportedly in the early stages of development at Microsoft, but in the meantime, the PC giant is apparently working on unifying its gaming experience across the various platforms where its games are available. According to a Windows Central report, Microsoft is working on something called Project Rainway, which is "a set of in-game APIs and user interface features," that will take shape as a cross-platform Xbox user interface. This news comes after Microsoft's recent "This is an Xbox" ad campaign and some pretty notable changes to its Xbox Game Bar to make that more compatible with gaming handhelds. How this new API and UI will take shape is yet to be seen, but it will likely further blur the line between gaming consoles and PCs—something that the Valve Steam Deck has also done in the years since its launch.

This seems to align with Microsoft's current strategy around gaming, which has seen Microsoft Gaming head, Phil Spencer, confirm that the company is both working on its own gaming handheld and that, in the meantime, it is focussed on making the Xbox gaming experience as seamless and enjoyable as possible on current gaming hardware. Xbox is also seemingly moving away from console exclusives as a concept, as we reported earlier this month, and, according to Windows Central's sources at least, this is partly because Microsoft has noticed no measurable impact on Xbox performance as a result of moving Xbox exclusives over to other consoles.

The third annual Steam Year In Review Steam Replay has arrived, and your very own jaunt down gaming memory lane awaits! It's a fun-filled, fact-filled, friend-filled (because you can share it!) look back at what you played in 2024.

Name change? What name change?
Ok, you got us. We called it Steam Replay when we launched it in 2022. Then last year, some of us thought "Hey! What if we changed it to Steam Year In Review for giggles?" Then we all giggled and did it. Then this year, someone said, "Um, that was a dumb idea we had last year. Are we crazy if we change it back to the better name for it?" And we all said "Shut up, Gabe, that's too much work." HA HA we kid, it was actually Chris. Or Eric? No wait it was Jane. Or maybe Tom? And we actually said "That's a great, collaborative idea, fellow teammate!" and here we are.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is a known quantity at this point, with leaks suggesting that an early-to-mid-2025 launch seems more and more likely. Now, research firm DFC Intelligence has published a report projecting Switch 2 sales to soar past its predecessor's first-year sales figures. According to the report, the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 will sell between 15 and 17 million units in 2025 alone, and, given that it is the only one of the big-three consoles to get a major generational update next year, it looks like it will go largely uncontested.

By comparison, according to Nintendo's 2018 financial results, the original Nintendo Switch sold 15.5 million units in its first year on the market. The original Switch launched just before the start of the new fiscal year, though, on March 3 (Nintendo's fiscal year ends on March 31), and in its first 28 days on the market, the Switch reportedly garnered over 2 million sales. This puts the Switch 2 on track to surpass or at least match the first-generation Nintendo Switch, despite the Switch 2 facing mounting competition from the likes of the Steam Deck and Windows-based gaming handhelds. Statista data shows that the Nintendo Switch peaked at around 29 million units sold per year around 2021. Obviously, the circumstances surrounding the launch of the original Switch were somewhat different, with sales likely still riding the wave that gaming hardware saw during the COVID pandemic.

Dauntless's recent Steam launch proved disastrous, thanks to some changes the developer made to the core gameplay, which we covered in more detail here. Phoenix Labs responded shortly after the controversy, but that original statement was largely seen as dismissive by the community. Now, Phoenix Labs has put out yet another response, this time responding to individual criticisms and laying out a detailed plan for the future of Dauntless.

In the response, Phoenix Labs starts off by apologizing to the community for the lost progression and disastrous Awakening update. Throughout the rest of the statement, the developer breaks down how it plans to address each of the criticisms, including the progression reset, monetization, and core gameplay changes. The most interesting take-away from Phoenix Labs's response is that the returning players will be rewarded with additional in-game resources—300,000 Rams and 5,000 Combat Merits as well as Peerless Aetherite, scaling based on how many weapons players had crafted before the update—to get them back up to speed in the new system. As of Update 2.2.0, dropping "early next year," players will also no longer have to re-do quests they had already previously completed in order to unlock all game modes and regions. Various challenges and monsters have also received reward drop buffs to speed up progression. Monetization changes include making the free battle pass for future seasons more rewarding, and Phoenix Labs also promised to re-evaluate the monetization strategy in future updates "to balance sustainability with fairness while remaining rewarding for players." As for core gameplay changes, Phoenix Labs has already implemented changes to armor perks, shield caps, and weapon buffs based on feedback, and it says that it will continue to find more ways to add diversity and depth to player builds in future updates.

On the morning of the launch of Warframe 1999, the ambitious 90s-themed update and story expansion for sci-fi-fantasy looter-shooter Warframe, Digital Extremes published the update notes for Warframe 1999, which launched in the morning of December 13. Warframe 1999 introduces a new tile-set, called Höllvania, alongside its companion cinematic quest, which will send players back in time to discover the Protoframes and help find the Protoframe creator, Albrecht Entrati. Players will form part of an underground resistance team alongside the Protoframes, although players will not play as the Protoframes or even their own Warframes in 1999. Instead, players will travel to Höllvania and complete the new Hex quest as Drifter. Höllvania has its own seasons, and players will enter the new area in winter.

The update also adds new quests and mission types in the new map, which see players hunt down and stop the Techrot and Scaldra in a number of classic Warframe game modes, including assassination, exterminate, and Warframe's first PvPvE mode. Along with the new game modes, there is also a new Warframe—appropriately called Cyte-09, sticking with the 90s theme—who looks to be something of an all-rounder, thanks to his abilities. Cyte-09 also drops with his own signature rifle, the Reconifex, which applies a heat effect and reload speed buff on timed reloads, and the Vesper77 secondary, which appears to be a critical-based sidearm that highlights weak points when aiming down the sights. There are also a number of changes coming to Warframe's core gameplay, including the introduction of the Atomicycle motorcycle, which will be available for all open maps, and the long-awaited Nyx and Trinity reworks. Find out more about the more minor changes in the full Warframe 1999 patch notes.

Ubisoft recently, and after a long period of reluctance, decided to add Steam achievements to some of its Assassin's Creed games it had launched on Steam. This comes shortly after Ubisoft launched Assassin's Creed Mirage to Steam with achievements already baked-in. Now, Assassin's Creed Unity, Black Flag, Revelations, and Syndicate all join AC Mirage in the Steam Achievements family. Putting the cherry on top of the achievement pie, any achievements already earned while playing the Steam versions of these Assassin's Creed games will retroactively apply to your Steam account.

The recently added Steam achievements are all pretty standard fare, with each game getting in the neighborhood of 50-60 achievements, except for AC Revelations, which only has 48 achievements. Where Ubisoft previously almost spitefully neglected its Steam audience, with many Assassin's Creed and other AAA games only coming to Steam long after their initial launch—largely without support for achievements and other advanced features—the game developer has seemingly realized the value of Steam as a platform.

This evening at The Game Awards 2024 show, Square Enix announced that FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH is set for a PC launch on January 23, 2025. Pre-orders are now live on Steam and Epic Games stores.

The PC version introduces new features and customizations to take full advantage of the platform:

• LIGHTING - Lighting has been adjusted, and the game's overall rendering of light is significantly improved. The updated areas and cutscenes present with even greater beauty and clarity than before.
• FRAMERATE AND RESOLUTION - NVIDIA DLSS support means that frame rates can be enhanced and image quality upscaled. There is now also support for variable refresh rate (VRR).
• TEXTURES - The Level of Detail (LoD) for background models and MIP maps for background textures can both be freely configured in the options settings. With this background polygon density and texture density can be set higher than was previously possible, allowing for gameplay with higher-quality graphics.

We here at Naughty Dog are thrilled to finally announce that The Last of Us Part II Remastered will be available on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store on April 3, 2025. Originally released for the PlayStation 5 console earlier this year, Part II Remastered allows players to continue the acclaimed story of The Last of Us with a definitive version featuring the award-winning campaign, new modes, improved quality, and more. But before we dive into how that experience is making the jump to PC be sure to watch our announcement trailer below.

The Last of Us Part II Remastered is designed to let players who have never experienced this story to do so in the best way possible, while also offering those replaying the story to deepen their appreciation for its creation, mechanics, and all the incredible work done by our team at Naughty Dog.

Hyper Light Breaker, the sequel to the massively popular indie hit, Hyper Light Drifter, is set to release on Steam on January 15, 2025. The only catch is that the game will release into early access, meaning it will likely change significantly during its first year on the market. At launch, Hyper Light Breaker will cost $29.99.

While Hyper Light Breaker shares a name with and hits a lot of the same aesthetic notes as Hyper Light Drifter, it isn't exactly a sequel in the classical sense. Hyper Light Breaker is set "decades before" the events of Hyper Light Drifter, and the aesthetic looks like an upgraded version of the hyper stylized 3D graphics we saw from Heart Machine in Solar Ash, as opposed to the top-down 2D pixel art of Hyper Light Drifter. Unlike Solar Ash, though, the core gameplay loop will rely on rogue-lite mechanics and hack and slash combat, making it a unique entry in the Hyper Light universe. Additionally, Hyper Light Breaker will be a co-op game, with support for up to three players in a squad.

Refurbished Steam Decks have been a more affordable way to get into the handheld gaming PC space for a while now, but Valve just announced that it has now added the OLED version of the Steam Deck to its official refurbished device line-up. Now, you can get your hands on a Steam Deck OLED for as little as $439 for the 512 GB variant or $519 for the 1 TB version—a healthy $110 and $130 cheaper compared to new units, respectively.

Valve claims the refurbished Steam Deck units—generally customer returns—are functionally identical to new stock units, and it says that there is a strict inspection and testing process for all returned Steam Decks that go into the refurbished program. The only material difference between factory new and refurbished units are "cosmetic defects to be small blemishes or scratches (on the plastic casing, not the screen) generally caused from normal handling of the unit," and these will obviously vary from device to device. In case anything goes wrong, Valve offers the same warranty and support for the refurbished units as it does for its factory new Steam Decks. Unfortunately, the refurbished Steam Deck OLEDs are only available in Canada, the EU, the UK, and the US. Other regions are stuck with regular MSRP Steam Decks or third-party refurbished or used handheld consoles.

After the fiasco surrounding the cancelled press previews and delayed upcoming launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows, it appears that Ubisoft is doing something of a redemption tour in order to garner hype for the latest installment in the Assassin's Creed franchise. Previously, news about AC Shadows's simultaneous console and Steam launch was quite positively received. Now, Ubisoft has given us a full overview of what's to come regarding the combat mechanics in Assassin's Creed Shadows. While the weapons and unit types in Shadows are certainly interesting, perhaps the most important take-away is that timing will be an important aspect to combat.

One of the most important mechanics behind Assassin's Creed Shadows's combat seems to be the character and weapon choices. The samurai, Yasuke, and the shinobi, Naoe, will supposedly come with their own versions of stealth, defensive, and offensive attacks, and each will have their own weapons, to bring some diversity to the gameplay of each character. It looks like each of the different weapon classes will be locked to either character and play style. At launch, Naoe will have three weapons to choose from, and Yasuke will have a broader selection of five weapons to choose from.

Nearly five years after Dauntless first launched on consoles and the Epic Games Store, the free-to-play co-op ARPG finally launched on Steam on December 5, although things haven't gone particularly smoothly since then. Less than a week after the Steam launch, the Steam reviews of Dauntless are already in "Overwhelmingly Negative" territory, with SteamDB citing just 19.21% positive reviews. The negative reviews seem to stem from the changes the game's developer, Phoenix Labs, made to the game when it was launched on Steam.

As part of the new Awakening update and launch on Steam, changes were made to a few key gameplay mechanics, and those changes have not been well received by the community. Additionally, progression has been reset for all players, new and old, forcing players to replay quests they've already completed and re-level weapons they had already mastered. The Awakening update also introduced Canisters, a sort of loot box monetization system that offers in-game cosmetics and can only be accessed in the season pass or by purchasing Platinum, the game's premium currency. Basically all of the posts on the Dauntless subreddit after the update are complaints about the changes to the game's mechanics or about players feeling slighted over the deletion of past progression. Players are also upset that the removal of a swathe of weapons has negatively affected build diversity and made players feel like they wasted their time thoroughly learning the game's mechanics and tuning builds. The developer seemingly tried to mitigate the removal of these weapons by adding new abilities, but that doesn't seem to have been enough to compensate for the decreased build diversity. Yet more complaints stem from apparent performance degradations on both PS5 and Xbox Series consoles. Worse still, those same performance degradations appear to be quite random, with some players saying that their performance has remained the same throughout the update.

Steam has set a new record of over 39 million concurrent players, breaking its earlier record of over 38 million set back in September. Some of the recently launched games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, Marvel Rivals, and Path of Exile 2 are doing quite well.

As spotted by DSOGaming, the newest Steam record for concurrent players is set at 39,205,447. It took around three months to break the previous record of over 38 million concurrent players set back in September. When it comes to the list of most played games in the last 24 hours, Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 are still holding the top two places, but some recently launched games are also doing quite well.

It's no secret that 2024 hasn't been kind to live-service games, with recent months seeing games like XDefiant and Concord shut down—although not always without reason—so it's a bit refreshing to see the recently released Marvel Rivals hit what can only be described as a home run. Not only is the game already at "Mostly Positive" in terms of Steam reviews, the free-to-play hero shooter also managed to draw in massive amounts of players in its first week on Steam. According to SteamDB, Marvel Rivals peaked at 444,286 concurrent players a mere two and a half hours after its launch on Friday, December 6.

The game launched on the same day as Path of Exile 2, which had an equally successful launch, despite its Early Access fee and some serious technical hiccups along the way. These two games have not been the norm, although Marvel Rivals signals that gaming properties based on Marvel characters may have finally found their audience. In previous years, both Marvel's Midnight Suns and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy made their own impacts, scoring big with both reviewers and audiences. Of course, neither of the aforementioned games garnered quite the player count as Marvel Rivals, but that's likely simply due to the free-to-play nature of Rivals.

Path of Exile 2 today released in Early Access on Steam and consoles, and, despite the game's $29.99 Early Access pricing, it has already managed to amass a peak player count of over 458,920 players on Steam alone. While this is undoubtedly good news for the developer and publisher, the increased server load has apparently already caused problems, resulting in excessive queue times to get into game sessions. At the time of writing, the game has only been available to play for a little over four hours, and the player count is only beginning to plateau now.

According to the Path of Exile X account, the development team has been hard at work trying to stem the bleeding, as it were. So far, the Path of Exile website has been down several times due to the high traffic, preventing players from claiming their Steam keys. Additionally, and somewhat hilariously, this outage has also affected the "Early Access Live Updates" site that was meant to be a resource for gamers to keep track of work the live service team was doing to try and deal with the high launch-day volumes.