Rematch launched without crossplay because of 'unforeseen technical complexities' and Sloclap is sorry, but it's a hit on Steam anyway

With the 5v5 soccer game Rematch now in full release, developer Sloclap has issued an apology for waiting until the last minute to tell fans it would not have crossplay at launch—and promising that the feature is coming as soon as possible.

Sloclap had previously confirmed that crossplay was in the plan for Rematch, and that it was hoping to have the feature ready for launch: On March 3, for instance, developer nobugz said on the Rematch Discord that "we're doing our best efforts to have cross platform Day 1 but I can't confirm it yet unfortunately. If we don't manage it at launch, it will be made available in an update very soon after."

The studio didn't confirm that crossplay would not be available in Rematch at launch until June 16, however, just ahead of the game's advance access period, surprising and disappointing some followers.

"We understand many of you were looking forward to playing Rematch across platforms from day one," Sloclap wrote a few hours after Rematch went fully live. "We did our utmost to include crossplay at launch, but Rematch is the studio’s first crossplay title, and we faced unforeseen technical complexities which prevented us from having this feature ready in time. We should have communicated as soon as it became apparent that crossplay wouldn’t be available at launch, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience and frustration it caused to some of our players.

"It’s very important for us that our players are able to enjoy Rematch with their friends, so along with bugfixes, crossplay is our absolute highest priority, we're committed to delivering this feature swiftly, and we’ll share a more precise deadline as soon as possible. We already have a basic working version from a technical standpoint, but we need to implement the relevant interfaces, before debugging and polishing it, and finally passing console certifications successfully—all this takes time but we are doing our best to move forward quickly."

First things first, though: Sloclap said addressing reports of performance issues from some players is its "highest priority," and the studio is currently digging into issues with lag, stuttering, and frame drops, server and client desync issues, and crashes, freezes, and menu locks.

More long-term, developers will turn their attention to improving mechanics and gameplay, adding support for tournaments, leaderboards for players above the Elite ranking, and club creation, as well as adding new quickplay game modes and AI controlled bots to assist with training.

A time frame for all of this wasn't provided, but Sloclap warned players not to expect it all by the end of the year: "We will communicate on a more precise roadmap for upcoming seasons as soon as we have better visibility on when we can deliver on these intentions."

The good news for the team is that the lack of crossplay (and belated messaging about it) doesn't seem to be having too much of a negative effect on Rematch. On its first day of full release, the concurrent player count currently stands at just shy of 93,000 on Steam alone. It doesn't look like it's going to break 100K today—the numbers are starting to slide, although there's still time left and anything's possible—but that's not bad at all for a Thursday afternoon. I fully expect the big hundo will be handily surpassed once the weekend hits.