Rematch developer SloClap has issued an update on the lack of crossplay in the game, apologizing to fans and admitting it should have let players know it wouldn’t make launch earlier.
Rematch, from the studio behind Sifu and Absolver, is a 5v5 online multiplayer arcade soccer game played from a third-person perspective. Its recent beta was hugely popular, with 1.9 million taking part across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. But fans complained when SloClap confirmed Rematch wouldn’t have crossplay at launch, just hours before early access began.
Now, in a blog post shared with the press to coincide with Rematch’s full launch today, June 19, SloClap explained what went wrong.
“We understand many of you were looking forward to playing Rematch across platforms from day one,” the studio said.
“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.”
Elsewhere in the post, SloClap addressed the performance issues that affected the early access launch, saying fixing them is a priority. These include lag, stuttering, and frame drops affecting gameplay. Server and client desync has been impacting match quality, too.
“For instance, we are aware of issues where players would sometimes be unable to interact with the ball, with player characters and the ball seemingly moving across the pitch unpredictably,” SloClap said. It’s on the case. And then there is work being done to squash game-breaking bugs that cause crashes, freezes after goals, and menu lockouts.
Besides these issues, SloClap said it’s working on upcoming updates, “with plenty of cool content and features we want to bring to the game.” The four main areas of focus are core gameplay changes, competitive features (tournament system, a leaderboard system for players above Elite ranking, as well as a club creation system), social components (crossplay is the big one, but others include being able to spectate your squad’s game when you join a squad, and allowing players to team up and rematch with teammates they enjoyed playing with), and casual play features such as AI-controlled bots so players can train with and against AIs.
SloClap concluded its post by pointing out that it is a small studio and all the features it has outlined will take time to come out. “Please remember that we are not a huge team, and that these features take time, so don’t expect all this by the end of the year!” it said.
Despite the launch issues and lack of crossplay, Rematch is well-received on Steam, where it has a 'mostly positive' user review rating. At the time of this article's publication, Rematch has 35,595 concurrent players on Valve's platform, a number that looks set to rise as the game heads into its first weekend.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
