Last Epoch's players are revolting — and it's about money, not the game
The ARPG that earned goodwill as a scrappy Kickstarter project is now watching that goodwill curdle, one angry review at a time.
Last Epoch is an action-RPG in the Diablo and Path of Exile mold: kill monsters, farm loot, rewire your build freely, and play fully offline if you want. The combat still earns praise.
What soured: players say the studio, after a buyout, walked back its monetization promises and pushed paid seasons while the single-player campaign sits unfinished. Trust is the casualty.
What this game is
Last Epoch is an action-RPG cut from the same cloth as Diablo and Path of Exile: carve through hordes of monsters, hoover up loot, and pour it into ever-deeper character builds. Its signature is an unusually flexible skill system. Individual abilities can be re-specced and rewired, so you change how a skill behaves, its element, and its synergies, not just slot it. It also runs fully offline, a rarity in a genre dominated by always-online competitors. It began life as a small Kickstarter project from Eleventh Hour Games and shipped in 2024.
What happened
The recent surge is not celebration. It is a backlash. After the studio took on outside money, players say it walked back earlier promises about monetization, leaning into paid seasonal content while the single-player campaign still sits unfinished. Add long-standing bugs and bouts of disconnects, and a community that once championed the underdog has turned its goodwill into a wall of warnings. The spike here is anger, not hype.
Player voices
The most-upvoted recent review is blunt about where the studio's attention has gone:
"The base game/campaign isn't even complete but the focus is already on 'seasons' because that's where the money is." — a player with about 35 hours
The frustration cuts deeper because the game underneath still has defenders. One pointed to a real niche it fills:
"If you want a game that can play completely offline unlike Poe or diablo online nonsense … an ARPG that run reasonably well on steam deck." — a player with about 18 hours
Verdict
⚠️ The combat and build system are still genuinely good, and if you only want a solid offline ARPG to play solo, Last Epoch delivers that today. The warning is about what your purchase endorses. Buying in now means backing a monetization turn that many long-time supporters feel betrayed by, attached to a campaign that still isn't finished. Play it for the mechanics if that's all you're after. If studio trust matters to you, this is a wait-and-watch.
Get breakdowns like this every day
The top Hacker News stories, unpacked — by email, Telegram, or RSS.
Sniper Elite: Resistance is selling again — but players attach one condition
A price cut pulled a wave of buyers back to Rebellion's WWII sniper sim. Their reviews come with an asterisk the size of the discount.