Respawn’s battle royale Apex Legends is getting its long-awaited crossplay feature next week, the developer announced on Thursday. Crossplay will arrive on October 6th alongside the new limited-time “Aftermarket Collection” event.
The feature, first announced back in June, is launching into beta for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC platforms, meaning those three groups of players will be able to play with and against one another for the first time since the game’s February 2019 launch. There won’t, however, be cross-progression, meaning you can’t take your console account with you to PC or vice versa, as you can in games like Destiny 2, Fortnite, and Warzone.
Get revved up for the Aftermarket Collection Event. Take part in the cross-play beta, dive into the new “Flashpoint” LTM, take on challenges to earn exclusive rewards, and more! It’s going to be a hell of a ride!
Speed off into the Aftermarket Collection Event starting Oct 6. pic.twitter.com/iwEDkX1i9U
— Apex Legends (@PlayApex) October 1, 2020
“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,” explains game director Chad Grenier.
Crossplay will be turned on by default, Respawn says, but only in such a way that PS4 and Xbox One players will be grouped together in lobbies with one another. If players opt in to a PC-console lobby by grouping together with a PC friend playing via EA’s Origin client, then they’ll be placed in PC servers. (Respawn says Steam players will be supported as well when the Steam version of the game launches later this year.) Respawn is highly encouraging players not to disable crossplay, however, as doing so may increase queue times.
“If you wish to disable cross-play altogether, you can disable cross platform play 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,” Grenier says. “This has a high chance of making your queue times very very long, as we anticipate that most users will have cross-play enabled given its default state of ‘enabled’ and the requests for the feature from so many players. We highly recommend leaving cross platform play enabled to ensure the best experience possible.”
Respawn is enabling a universal in-game friend search feature for finding players and creating parties across platforms. As for cross-progression, Grenier says it will have more to share about that feature closer to the launch of its official Steam version later this year. Apex Legends is also slated to come to Nintendo Switch at some point this fall, but it’s unclear if Respawn will enable crossplay for that platform, too.
