Epic & Steam version crossplay

[Polysorbate]

A couple friends and I bought this on Epic. I refunded it after an hour because it was a buggy broken mess. Hoping that's better by now. If I buy the Steam version can I play with them?

[Suzaku]

It's unknown if it will be possible/available at release, but the devs have expressed a desire for crossplay.

[Whiplash]

"unknown" is a funny way to put it, because it's absolutely possible. Gearbox has shown this with the work they are doing to make BL3 cross playable from Epic and Steam.

The real question is whether they will be willing to do the work required to do it. Whether by having their own infrastructure for matchmaking, rather than just via Epic/Steam friends lists. This is the Gearbox approach. Linking accounts with Shift and bringing people together cross platform via their shift accounts.

It could even just be as easy as allowing some kind of dedicated servers, so people can just connect via IP address.

If they choose to not do the work to make cross platform here, it will be a slap in the face to the people who bit the bullet and supported them by buying on Epic, despite the controversy. It would be leaving us high and dry without any means to connect to other players of the exact same game.

That would be totally outrageous to do to the very few people who openly supported their decision to go exclusive. They chose to put the game exclusively on Epic. They chose to do so for monetary gain. It's their own mess, it's not our mess. It's their problem to deal with.

It *is* possible to make cross play. Saying otherwise is lying. It's about whether or not they are willing to do the work. Whether by providing their own internal matchmaking server or server browser that both games connect to, or by allowing dedicated servers which people from either platform can just IP into.

I suspect they may be trying to convince themselves that they don't have to do it. Or even hoping that people will just double down and buy it again on Steam to avoid the problem. But many people will not do that, and it will become another active talking point against Epic exclusivity. To know that by supporting that exclusivity you take a chance to being cut out from the rest of the people who wait to buy it on Steam.

That's not acceptable. And it's not entitlement. They made the decision to release the game in this manner. If they choose to just betray the Epic buyers, it will have a huge backlash against both them and Epic...

Oddly enough, it's actually in Epic's best interest for this crossplay to happen. They don't need another negative talking point against their launcher.

And so now we will finally start to see the fruits of all this exclusivity nonsense. I gotta give Gearbox credit for tackling it head on.

[Tiberia]

Aince the game uses a p2p connection and no Server whatsoever

Yes it will be 100 possible even versions not gotten on epic can play with epic games.

[Cake for Mumm-Ra]

Originally posted by Whiplash:

snip

You're really digging into something that you haven't taken the time to research. They simply said that they want to do crossplay with steam but haven't investigated this yet. They've been focusing on developing other elements the game and haven't put a significant amount of time into planning for crossplay between steam and epic. They're aware that it's possible, but actually setting it up requires time - time that is being prioritized on other things during this period when the game isn't even available on steam. This is really not something to be outraged about; steam is not the central nexus of the gaming universe, so we'll just need to be patient.

If crossplay does become a feature (which seems pretty likely) it may not be available the moment it launches on steam.

[Snutt]

Cross play is something we're looking into at the moment and I don't think we want to release a version on steam without it in some form or way.

So yes! You should™ be able to play with your epic friends when we release!

[Atomizer]

Originally posted by Cake for Mumm-Ra:

Originally posted by Whiplash:

snip

You're really digging into something that you haven't taken the time to research. They simply said that they want to do crossplay with steam but haven't investigated this yet. They've been focusing on developing other elements the game and haven't put a significant amount of time into planning for crossplay between steam and epic. They're aware that it's possible, but actually setting it up requires time - time that is being prioritized on other things during this period when the game isn't even available on steam. This is really not something to be outraged about; steam is not the central nexus of the gaming universe, so we'll just need to be patient.

If crossplay does become a feature (which seems pretty likely) it may not be available the moment it launches on steam.

There is no other reason to delay the game other then implementing crossplay, implementing basic steam functionality isn't that complicated, if it wasn't for crossplay, the game would probably already be out on steam. (Well...maybe, there certainly isn't a hardware porting process involved)

[Mark]

If no work has been done on steam yet, then I guess there might be some weeks of even months of work involved.

Personally I don't care for crossplay and would welcome an early access release on steam that's basically the current codebase with only the absolutely necessary changes to be able to publish it on both platforms. Even if it's just because I love testing new stuff.

But I completely understand that a release without crossplay would make a lot of buyers unhappy. It does make me curious as to how such things are implemented.