Path of Exile developer Grinding Gear Games has announced that it's pausing updates for the first game while it works on Path of Exile 2.
In a video message to fans, game director Jonathan Rogers says that Grinding Gear "can't really work on [upcoming update] Path of Exile 3.26 before Path of Exile 2 0.2.0 has shipped", and that the studio "probably need[s] to support that for a couple of weeks" after launch, too.
While the studio will be working on "a bunch of preproduction" for Path of Exile update 3.26, it'll be dragging across staff from the first game in order to work on the second, which Rogers says still has "major issues", making it the priority for Grinding Gear at the moment.

Rogers goes on to say that it's "hard to even think about" what the team might create for Path of Exile when the sequel has "really obvious problems that need fixing".
He goes on to say that once Path of Exile 2 0.2.0 has been launched, the team will "devote as many resources as are needed" to get Path of Exile update 3.26 finished "as soon as possible".
Previously, Rogers had said that dedicating resources to both Path of Exile and its sequel "shouldn't be an issue", and that Grinding Gear Games is "set up" in a way that allows it to do so. Evidently, however, that's not the case, at least not this time.
You can see Rogers' full video message, which contains a little more information regarding the shift in focus, right here.
Path of Exile 2 originally started life as a major update for the first game, but eventually, its scope expanded to the point that Grinding Gear Games decided to make it its own title instead.
The game was released to a broadly positive reception from players, although several issues were identified, leading Grinding Gear to promise fixes for those issues in the coming weeks.
You can check out Path of Exile 2 right now on PC via Steam Early Access, as well as on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. The first game is available right now for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, and you can play that one for free, too.