At this time, 20XX supports crossplay only between Steam and Epic, via the reworked public matchmaking system.
I know we've got some players concerned about the changes, so I thought I'd take a little time to explain what's changed, and why we did it.
- 20XX's friends-matchmaking is totally unaffected by these changes. (If you have a friend you primarily play with on Steam, this shouldn't affect you at all.)
- 20XX public matchmaking now uses Epic's backend services (instead of Steam's). For most players, this should result in no difference in matchmaking quality.
- We chose to do this because our data tells us that 20XX's public matchmaking on Steam is largely not used by players - most players play with their friends or find friends via Discord. Most reports we've gotten about the 20XX public matchmaking experience are "I hosted a game for awhile and no one joined, so I stopped."
- The best way for us to help fix that is by giving Steam players a bigger pool of public partners to play with! (If the issue really needs "fixing", anyway - after all, 20XX has been out of Early Access on Steam for almost three years.)
- We made a few changes to public matchmaking's featureset to accommodate crossplay. Again, to be super clear, none of these changes affect friends-co-op.
- Challenges (Daily/Weekly/Hardcore etc) are no longer playable in public co-op matchmaking. Everything else should work fine! This feature (in public co-op) has gone almost entirely unused since we added it, but we'll keep a close eye out for folks affected by this change.
- Public matching now uses a "passphrase" system to filter the lobbies available when you search. (See below for details.)
- Reconnect relies on Steam's lobby implementation, so that won't work in public online play anymore. (It didn't really work unless you were playing public with a Steam friend of yours, though, anyway, since you have to rejoin via the Steam Overlay.)
- Challenges (Daily/Weekly/Hardcore etc) are no longer playable in public co-op matchmaking. Everything else should work fine! This feature (in public co-op) has gone almost entirely unused since we added it, but we'll keep a close eye out for folks affected by this change.
- We'll keep a close eye on player feedback here - we feel we've overhauled a feature that players aren't using, but as always, we're looking out for your thoughts on the changes.
Thanks for playing!
CHANGES:
- Public play now uses a "passphrase" system to find lobbies. When searching for a game, you'll only return games that match the passphrase you set before hitting "join" - when you host with a passphrase, players will only see your game if they type it in exactly. This lets players coordinate across platforms where we don't have traditional support for friends/invite systems.
- Leave the passphrase blank if you're looking to find a random partner!
- This new public matching system applies to all players on either Epic or Steam - the passphrase system applies on both platforms, whether a passphrase is used or left blank.
- Improved Seed Racer entry UX (it uses the same logic as the new Passphrase system) - controllers can now enter/exit the field entry instead of it feeling like the game's softlocked (because it previously ignored controller input), and the text field's highlighted while active.
- The other changes from 1.41's last test push, which never made it live! The notable one here's an ancient invisible enemy error.
- Added a Russian translation of the game's long-form Datalore for Augs, Enemies, and Bosses, courtesy of Canary, a member of 20XX's community. Thanks!
