Key facts
- Cheapest right now
- € Standard · Global · Kinguin
- Live offers
- 31 offers · 10 stores
- Our pick
- Official Web · Steam Key · Global · Eneba — €
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Grinding Gear Games has finally put a date on the 1.0. Path of Exile 2 leaves Early Access on 11 December, and it turns free-to-play the same day. That changes what you are shopping for. Our Path of Exile 2 price page follows what twelve shops are asking for it, and after the announcement those numbers buy you something very specific: a head start, plus whatever cosmetics come attached to the pack you pick.
The announcement, and the two things it does not change
Two facts came out and they are the whole story. The 1.0 arrives on 11 December, and Path of Exile 2 goes free-to-play with it. No class list, no act count, no roadmap. If you have read any of that this week, somebody was filling in the blanks on their own.
What nobody bothers to spell out is the part that stays exactly as it was, and it is the part that worries anyone who has already paid. An Early Access pack you own stays yours. It was a purchase, never a rental. And the 1.0 does not show up as a separate product to pay for again on top. Nobody loses anything on 11 December. The only person with a decision to make is whoever was about to pay this week.
Fifteen weeks of head start, with a price tag on them
From today to 11 December is a little over three and a half months. That is the product on the shelf right now. The campaign, the leagues, the stash you spend your evenings filling — all of it gets handed to everybody else for free in the middle of December, so the money you spend this week is buying the calendar rather than the game.
Once you look at it that way the figures start arguing for themselves. The cheapest Standard on our list is € (with coupon AUGGOC10), over at Kinguin. The Early Access pack itself sits at € (with coupon Gocdkeys). And underneath both of them, which is the bit most people miss, is the Official Web Ed. at € (with coupon GOCDKEYS10), sold through Eneba — the studio's own web route undercutting the resale keys.
Twenty-odd euros spread across fifteen weeks works out at a bit over a euro a week. Perfectly fair, if you play. Money on fire, if the pack ends up sitting in your library until the free launch anyway. If you have already decided you want in now, the quickest way in is our buy Path of Exile 2 key page, which sorts the whole list by what each shop is actually charging at this minute.
Why has it got dearer as the free date got closer?
Our own record starts at the end of April. Average every live offer, month by month, and it reads €23.93, then €23.63, then €22.71, then €25.40, and so far this month €29.09. Five readings, and the line points the wrong way for a game that is three months from being given away.
There is nothing sinister in it. The supporter packs are expensive products and they drag the average up whenever two or three of them are listed, and an announcement week pulls buyers in rather than scaring them off. The cause matters less than the practical reading: sitting on your hands has cost money here, it has not saved any.
One caveat so the comparison stays honest. Those monthly averages are shelf prices with no coupon applied, while the figures further up already have the shop's coupon counted in. A slice of the gap between the two is nothing more than the coupon.
Twelve shops, thirty-four offers, eight different products
"Path of Exile 2" is not one item on a shelf. Sorted by what the cheapest of each kind is asking, the live list looks like this:
| Format | Offers | From | Up to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam Account | 2 | €11.36 | €17.27 |
| Official Web Ed. | 7 | €18.55 | €97.15 |
| Epic Store Key | 1 | €23.31 | €23.31 |
| Standard | 6 | €23.82 | €165.21 |
| Early Access | 4 | €23.90 | €35.70 |
| Steam Gift | 11 | €24.70 | €113.23 |
| Lord Ogham Pack | 2 | €61.70 | €85.44 |
| King of the Faridun Pack | 1 | €102.83 | €102.83 |
The last two are supporter bundles with cosmetic content bolted on, not a cheaper way of getting the base game. And look at the spread inside a single format before you tap anything: there is a Standard sitting at €165.21 and a Steam Gift at €113.23, both live, both perfectly legal to list, both a terrible use of your money for a game that will cost nothing in December.
Ten euros buys somebody's login, not a licence
The cheapest thing on the whole page is a Steam Account at € (with coupon AUGGOC10). Read the format before you read the number. You are being sold access to an account that belongs to another person, with their library, their password history and their recovery email attached to it. The game never lands in your own account, and it can stop working the day the original owner decides it should.
That format is a poor trade at the best of times. Here it borders on comedy: paying a stranger for the use of their account to play something that becomes free to the entire planet in three and a half months.
Play it over the next few weeks, or wait for the 11th?
Steam has it on Mixed, with 116 positive reviews out of 193. That is a small sample and it is judging the Early Access build rather than the version turning up in December, so treat it as a glance, not as evidence for a decision.
Plainly, then. If you are going to put real hours into it in September and October, twenty-something euros for a Standard or for the official web edition is a fair price for those weeks, and the cheapest shop moves around often enough that it is worth checking the list on the day you buy rather than trusting a figure you read here. If you are not certain you will even start it before the free launch, there is no argument to have. Wait. Nothing on the shelf beats free.
I have been a gamer for as long as I can remember, and for the last 14 years I have been making life easier for other gamers. CEO and co-founder of Gocdkeys.
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