Path of Exile to cease support for Windows XP, Vista, and DirectX 9

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Direct Xile.

Massive ARPG Path of Exile will end support for Windows XP and Vista as of its next update, Grinding Gear Games has reported.

In an announcement on the game's website, Grinding Gear stated that "March's 3.6.0 update will not work with the Windows XP or Windows Vista operating systems.”

According to the developer, the number of active XP and Vista users amounts to a mere 0.1% of the game’s total user-base, which makes sense considering that Windows XP is now old enough to drive. Windows Vista, meanwhile, is verging on becoming a teenager, which would at least explain why it was so sluggish and unlikely to do as it was told.

“Microsoft, Steam and most other game companies have already ended support for these operating systems, and we plan to do the same,” Grinding Gear continued. “This will also free up technical resources for other more impactful tasks.”

“Path of Exile's game environments are designed around their shadows. Over time, we have relied more and more on shadows as a critical part of the environment, and so the game without shadows has become very different than the experience we intend. Because of this, we made sure that our new renderer had fast shadows. The DirectX 11 version (with shadows) performs much better than the DirectX 9 one did without shadows enabled.”

So, basically, if you’re a big Path of Exile fan playing on either XP or Vista, you’ve got between now and March to upgrade to at least Windows 7. Meanwhile, the remaining 99.9% of Path of Exile players will benefit from a faster overall game, as Grinding Gear claim they can “simplify a lot of code”.

Rick Lane
Contributor

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.