If there’s one highlight from this generation of gaming that could be seen as a major innovation, it’s the normalizing of cross-play between systems. While the cross-play experience is still far from perfect, the ability for players to play with their friends, regardless of their preferred platform, seems to be a welcomed innovation in the multiplayer sphere of gaming. And with AAA games like Activision’s 2019 hit Call of Duty: Modern Warfare including cross-play support, it seems like the practice is here to stay, at least for the time being.
It’s because of this cross-play normalization that players were likely not too surprised when Respawn Entertainment announced that its popular battle royale, Apex Legends, would be receiving an update to add the feature to the game. Whether that’s because the details of cross-play and cross-progression for Apex Legends seemingly leaked almost 9 months prior, or because other battle royales like Fortnite had already incorporated the feature as part of its offering, it’s hard to say. However, this announcement was seemingly still met with both a high level of enthusiasm and concern for the game’s well-being.
Most players will likely see any kind of cross-play support as a win for the gaming community, however, there are some issues that come along with it. And while some see the possibility of mouse and keyboard players having an advantage over controller users as the main obstacle that Apex Legends will have to overcome, there is one other issue that cross-play games present that could spell disaster for Respawn Entertainment and its player base.
Server issues on games that feature cross-play seem to be incredibly common. In fact, the phrase “does crossplay” auto-completes to “does crossplay cause lag” on Google. Even though games like Minecraft and ARK: Survival Evolved have had cross-play support for years, players still come across severe server crashes and bugs when it comes to their respective dedicated cross-platform servers. That doesn’t mean that their game developers aren’t concerned or working on making the experience as smooth as possible. It just means this “new norm” requires a little more time and effort than most gamers would likely expect.
Apex Legends isn’t exactly known for its polished online play as it is. Players have seen numerous issues that have caused the game to crash over the past year and a half, and some of have even found ways of weaponizing the servers of Apex Legends to get easy kills. It seems like the Apex Legends servers are slightly unstable as is, and integrating cross-play could serve to exacerbate the problem.
It probably doesn’t help that, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Respawn Entertainment has been working on Apex Legends from home. It’s likely due to this that Season 6 of the battle royale has seen an increase in bugs, both harmless and game-breaking. The new season introduced a new legend, the Quick Witted Modder Rampart, who was found to have a glitch that forcibly causes players to quit the match when shooting at the top of her Amped Cover ability. And while this issue was resolved rather quickly by Respawn, it seems rather symptomatic of how rough Apex Legends‘ on-going support is during this unprecedented time.
None of this is said to discourage players of their enthusiasm for cross-play in Apex Legends. The game has managed to continually innovate on the battle royale formula, while simultaneously offering a variety of fresh game modes, like those found in its LTMs. Cross-play seems like the natural next step in Apex Legends‘ continued support. But if it can’t get a hold of its server issues, players could be in for a rough time when cross-play does finally get introduced into the game.
Apex Legends is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with a Switch version currently in development.
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