Respawn’s Apex Legends is getting its highly-awaited crossplay feature next week. The developer has announced this on Thursday. Crossplay will hit on October 6th alongside the new limited-time “Aftermarket Collection” event.
The feature was announced back in June. And it is launching into beta for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC platforms. It means that those three groups of players will be able to play with and against one another for the first time since the game’s launch back in 2019. However, there won’t be cross-progression, meaning you can’t take your console account with you to PC or vice versa. You can only do that in games like Destiny 2, Fortnite, and Warzone.
“Since the launch of Apex Legends, cross-play has been one of the most requested features from our players who want the ability to play with their friends on other platforms. During the cross-play beta, players will have full access to cross-play functionality while we collect data, test the feature at scale, and most importantly, listen to you, the fans, for feedback,” said the game director Chad Grenier.
Respawn says that Crossplay will be turned on by default. But only in such a way that PS4 and Xbox One players will be grouped together in lobbies. Respawn says Steam players will be supported as well. But that will happen when the Steam version of the game launches later in 2020.
WHAT ELSE DO WE KNOW?
If you want to disable cross-play altogether, you can disable it in the settings menu. Doing so will only put you into matches with other users on the same platform, who have also disabled cross-platform play,” says Grenier. “This has a high chance of making your queue times very very long. We anticipate that most users will have cross-play enabled given its default state of ‘enabled’. We highly recommend you leave the cross-platform play enabled to ensure the best experience possible.
Respawn enables you a universal in-game friend search feature for finding players and creating parties across platforms. Grenier says cross-progression will have more to share about that feature closer to the launch of its Steam version later this year. Apex Legends is also announced to come to Nintendo Switch at some point this fall. But it’s unclear if Respawn will enable cross-play for that platform, too.
