Path of Exile 2's player trading economy crumbled in its last season the moment word got out about a clever technique that would net you so much loot you could become an in-game millionaire in a few days. It was so catastrophic that developer Grinding Gear Games had to interrupt its holiday break to fix it.

This was the season the "temple" was introduced to the game, giving players the ability to create their own dungeons by connecting various rooms together on a big grid. The system was mostly meant to be a way to fight a new boss and find temple-exclusive loot, but players quickly figured out how to make it the most lucrative system in the game for all loot.

Part of the strategy involved locking a character in the campaign and repeatedly resetting a level to gradually grow your temple into a money-making machine. By linking specific synergistic rooms together in an endless snake, you could avoid having them deleted after running the dungeon and guarantee heaps of valuable loot—way more than you're intended to get anywhere else in the game.

PoE 2's co-director Mark Roberts said having to deploy emergency patches to fix some of this "ruined Christmas for me" in a recent interview. "We now—because of this bloody temple—have way more active stats for checking how many items are dropping in certain instances," he added.

Roberts said this moments before another developer showed him what players were doing with the temple that same day. "It says, 'TEMPLE SHENANIGANS T1 ISSUE AFTER INTERVIEW' in capital letters," he said looking just off-screen. A few hours after the interview, a patch went out to address a temple strategy that, while far less egregious than the first one, still threatened to destroy the economy.

"I don't care if it's a mid-league nerf, I've lost all sympathy for that bloody temple and everyone running it," Roberts said. "No, I'm being extreme, I don't want to actually just make it bad, but it's left some trauma."

Typically, the developers try not to touch anything major a few weeks into a league, but the temple exploits were too severe to ignore. PoE 2 is technically an early access game, but most people treat it like they would PoE 1 and expect GGG to be on top of balancing it so nothing sours the experience for them.

Making as much in-game wealth as you can ends up being the primary goal of PoE 2 players who wish to upgrade their builds with the most powerful items. You can always opt out of having to play the economy game with the solo self-found mode (no multiplayer allowed), but then some of the rarest items won't be feasible to get within a single league.

I wonder if this debacle will convince GGG to avoid ever dropping a new league right before the holidays. Players are always searching for ways to break the game and they're certainly not going to respect that you're on vacation. It seems like someone has to be on-call to stop whatever absurdly powerful exploit they inevitably find.

Composer and sound designer Robert Caskin Prince III, more commonly known as Bobby Prince, died June 16 at the age of 81. The news came in the form of an obituary which was posted to Legacy. "Those closest to Bobby knew him not only for his extraordinary accomplishments but for his kindness, humor, humility, generosity, creativity, and deep love of family," it reads.

"Whether composing music, telling stories, playing guitar, sharing laughter, or offering encouragement, he approached life with gratitude and an open heart."

Prince developed sound effects and music for dozens of classic PC games, including Doom, Doom 2, Wolfenstein 3D, and more. His music for Doom in particular remains one of the celebrated videogame soundtracks in the medium's history, making it into the US Library of Congress' National Recording Registry. It's full to bursting with homages to the day's en vogue heavy metal: bands like Metallica, Judas Priest, and Diamond Head.

RIP Bobby Prince. this 1993 clip of him explaining the Commander Keen menu music is amazing. worth a watch even if you don't give a rip about Keen. source link below.

— @jaytholen.net (@jaytholen.net.bsky.social) 2026-06-19T18:46:58.450Z

His work can be found all over the games put out by id Software, Apogee, and 3D Realms in the '90s. Lesser known examples include Blake Stone, Bio Menace, and certain episodes of the Commander Keen platformers, and he worked alongside composer Lee Jackson on both Duke Nukem 3D and Rise of the Triad.

Jackson posted about Prince's passing on Bluesky, saying Prince was "a teacher, a mentor, and a friend."

"We worked together so well on Duke Nukem 3D that we could anticipate what the other was going to do next," he said. "If it weren't for him, I'd probably be stuck in a tech room somewhere still. Au revoir, Bobby. You're definitely missed."

Co-founder of id Software, Tom Hall, also said a few words on Bluesky: "His music legacy will live on, making inspired music for Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, countless others. A true legend. And such a nice man, great musician, wonderful, fun-loving man, nothing but happy memories of him. A loss to the world."

Path of Exile 2 has taken the throne. Not only is it a worthy sequel, its latest update earns it the right to have "next-generation action RPG" in its official description. I've played obscene amounts of these types of games and have never seen one quite so ambitious. Certainly not one that is still in early access and doesn't even have a finished campaign yet.

Even if developer Grinding Gear Games says it will be finished by the end of the year, PoE 2 is already one of the best action RPGs I've ever played and absolutely worth the price of admission (before it goes free-to-play for 1.0). It's one of the only games that has figured out how to follow-up its campaign with an endgame loot grind that barely feels like a grind at all.

The result is an experience that blends the eerie worldbuilding and irresistible loot chase of Diablo 2 with the challenging combat of Elden Ring. PoE 2 is a game where a giant gorilla can smash you into pieces with a stone pillar and a game where that same gorilla can drop an item that transforms your entire character. In fact, one of its many classes specializes in taming monsters, and I bet you can guess how cathartic it is to watch that giant gorilla smash someone else apart for a change.

PoE 2 is full of ideas stretched further than any other game in the genre has pulled off. The only roadblock is its staggering complexity. Ask anyone if they remember the first time they witnessed the might of its sprawling skill tree and you'll know if that sounds like a rabbit hole you want to dive into. As someone who still has much to learn, I think it's absolutely worth the plunge.

PoE 2's excellent campaign is the sole reason it's actually playable for normal people compared to PoE 1. While the Return of the Ancients update didn't add a new chapter of the story, it did clean up some of its worst parts. Experienced players will notice how much faster it is to navigate some of the most labyrinthine levels, which makes replaying the campaign every season seem much easier.

New players just benefit from tighter pacing and the heaps of items you get from the latest league, or season mechanic. These side activities are the focus of each league and eventually get added permanently to the game. This time, there are stone shards scattered throughout Wraeclast that drop valuable items after defeating a few waves of monsters.

Bonus loot like that is essential for helping you survive the campaign's most brutal bosses, like the man who goes full Bloodborne and turns into a mutated wolf. We're already well past the early days of PoE 2 when the campaign was so stingy that you could play for 10 hours before getting your first necklace. Now, you'll have power spikes that let you trivialize certain sections before the enemies catch back up and start drawing blood again. Unlike other action RPGs, like Diablo 4, PoE 2's campaign feels like a journey rather than homework to finish before the real game begins.

Before, when PoE 2 presented you an endless endgame world map filled with little nodes representing levels to clear, your only goal was to see what you could find. Unless you frequented Reddit or YouTube, you'd have no idea what you're supposed to be doing. And now, that's no longer a problem.

The new version of the map surrounds your starting position with each major endgame activity, letting each one lure you in its direction. In the south you might see a patch of land warped by the bright green cracks of the hordes of Abyss monsters crawling out of their domain deep below the earth, or a pale garden of twitching purple hands where Breach monsters have invaded.

As you explore each of these areas, you'll run into characters who explain what's going on and direct you to a main hub for their associated mechanic. I met the ghost of a woman who opened a hole in the ground leading to an unsettling boss fight in the pitch black domain of a god. Later, I met a man standing next to a shattered mirror who spoke in riddles until I broke his curse and learned about the psychic damage (and piles of loot) Delirium encounters can bring you.

By filling the world with strange points-of-interest, PoE 2's endgame has abandoned the monotonous grind for a series of compelling investigations into its bizarre world. And the best part is there's a satisfying sense of completion as you finish each thread and clear out the map—which also means you have a solid stopping point if you're not interested in grinding until the next league.

PoE 2 is now packed with juicy secrets and powerful loot to find, creating an endgame experience that barely feels like an endgame at all.