Torchlight 3 Available In Early Access

The biggest surprise during today’s PC gaming show was that Torchlight 3 is now available on Steam in early access.

The third entry in the Torchlight ARPG series has been a long and arduous journey, but it’s still exciting to see the game available for Steam. Torchlight players are awaiting time for the successor to Torchlight 2, which came back in 2012, and during various developmental delays and high-profile departures, it seemed that the game would never see the light of day.

Torchlight 1 and Torchlight 2 were developed by Runic Games. Following the release of Torchlight 2, studio co-founder Max Shaffer announced that Runic Games was in the process of developing a torchlight thanks to a major investment from publisher Perfect World Entertainment.

Eventually, Max Shaffer left Runic Games and formed Extra Games. While the studio was able to get the flashlight torchlight back from the perfect world, the original studio, Runic Games, was eventually shut down.

Under Extra, development on the Torchlight MMO continued as a free-to-play game called Torchlight Frontiers. The game was announced in 2018 and featured at GamesCon.

In 2019, the direction for the game was shifted back to a more traditional ARPG with strong online features. Now called Torchlight 3, the game debuted on Steam in early access today.

Steam reviews are already being cast for the game, but are not too concerned about negative first reactions. The already recorded 361 negative reviews are mostly complaining of server issues, which is common with almost all the much-awaited games on launch day.

Other players seem to think that the game is always online, which was a common complaint of Diablo 3 even at launch. Fortunately, the developers clearly state in the early access section of the Steam Store page that the launch version of the game will also have an offline single-player option.