It's April Fools' Day, so don't trust anything you read. Most developers will make a throwaway announcement that will make you double take, chuckle for a few seconds, and then move on, but Grinding Gear Games has gone the whole hog and temporarily transformed its free-to-play action RPG Path of Exile into a 100-player battle royale game. Seriously.
"Based on community feedback, we are announcing that we have abandoned the action RPG genre to focus on what players really want. Path of Exile is being replaced by Path of Exile: Royale, a 100-person free-for-all battle royale game," it said on its website. It claims that it only took one day of development to make the switch.
Again, this is legit: my game is updating on Steam as I type this. It'll rename itself in your library and you'll be able to jump straight into a round. Just like in other battle royale games, there's an ever-shrinking red zone to avoid (the direction of the zone's centre is shown on your character's feet), but the Path of Exile-twist is that you'll have to fight computer-controlled monsters as well as other players. Last one standing gets a Rhoa Dinner.
Presumably, it'll switch back on Monday. But what if the player count skyrockets (no sign of that yet, but it's still early)? Will Grinding Gear keep it in as a separate game mode? Surely that must be in the back of the team's minds. For now, it looks like a fun change of pace from the normal game, and it might be worth diving in if you have a spare half hour.
