Path of Exile 2 lead designer and co-game director Mark Roberts holds a nasty grudge for one of the game’s most enduring exploits: Vaal Temple farming, which he says ruined his Christmas, left him traumatized, and made him gleeful about nerfing it down.
You’ll likely remember the Path of Exile 2 community’s infamous temple snaking strategy from the most recent league, Fate of the Vaal, but you probably don’t recall it as vividly as Roberts, who spent his 2025 holiday season alongside Grinding Gear Games identifying exploits, pumping the game full of balance fixes, and trying to ensure the in-game economy didn’t implode under the crippling weight of the all-powerful Temple farming grind. The exploit’s largely been wrangled as of now, but it had a lasting impact on Roberts’ psyche.
“I know we nerfed it recently,” Roberts says during an interview with PoE creator Zizaran (thanks, PCGN). “There was a bit of a, ‘yay, let’s not have that again.’ The Temple ruined Christmas for me.”
Hilariously, precisely as Roberts is going on about how much he hates the Vaal Temple, Zizaran reports live that “people have broken the Temple again.” In disbelief, Roberts says nothing seems “that out of control right now,” but eventually he and co-director Jonathan Rogers receive word from GGG homebase that, indeed, there’s a “T1 issue with the Temple” that would have to be discussed after the interview. Roberts and Rogers then break down in laughter. It’s actually very entertaining if you’re the type of person who gets amusement out of mild misfortune.
“The amount of joy I can get out of just going and obliterating the Temple right now, trust me. I don’t care if it’s a mid-league nerf,” says Roberts. “I’ve lost all sympathy for that bloody Temple and everyone running it for now.
“I’m being extreme. Obviously I don’t want to actually just make it bad, but it’s left some trauma,” he clarifies.
Roberts probably feels comfortable expressing all of this because, at least based on conversations I’m seeing in Path of Exile communities online, most people are pretty over the whole temple snaking exploit too, especially as it seems to continuously resurface with new strategies despite endless nerfs. Maybe it really is time to “burn it all down,” as one commenter suggested.
