Path of Exile 2 leaves early access on December 11 and goes free-to-play

Grinding Gear Games finally dated the end of early access: Path of Exile 2 hits version 1.0 on December 11, and that same day it becomes free-to-play. The reveal landed as a surprise during Gamescom's Opening Night Live on August 25, with a trailer of its own. Early access had started back in December 2024.

The trailer's headline is swords, missing for the whole of early access. They arrive with the Duelist, the first class in the game to wield one, built around aggressive sword-and-shield melee. Version 1.0 also fills in the campaign acts that were still missing. Beyond that, the studio didn't spell out what else ships with the final build.

The business-model switch matters as much as the content: getting into early access meant paying for a key. From December 11 that price disappears on PC (Steam and Epic), PlayStation and Xbox.

Alongside it, GGG opened a registration drive. Leave an email at pathofexile2.com/register and you get at least one exclusive cosmetic after launch; if the community clears all four registration milestones, everyone who signed up ends up with five. None of them will be sold in the store, and each code can be redeemed once, on a single Path of Exile account.

Codes only go out by email once the game is live, so signing up now gets you nothing today. What it does buy is the other thing that mailing list promises: news out of ExileCon and about 1.0 itself.