Apex Legends Reveals Cross-Play Beta Start Date

Apex Legends fans finally know when to expect one of the battle royale’s most frequently requested features.

Starting next week, Respawn Entertainment will deliver on its promise of allowing players on different platforms to team up with and play against each other, in turn exponentially expanding the pool of potential teammates/opponents for Apex‘s matchmaking system to pull from. In order to accommodate the anticipated feature’s arrival, however, the developer has had to make a series of important changes behind the scenes, including to the game’s social functions. Unlike so-called closed online environments (e.g. Xbox owners can only match with others on the same console), adding a friend across entirely different online networks requires specific in-game support.

Fortunately, however, the process here is pretty simple and only requires inputting a username (from any platform) into Apex‘s new “Find Friend” option. The recipient of your request can then choose to accept, refuse or block the invitation, the latter of which will automatically prevent all future cross-platform correspondence until manually unblocked.

For those concerned by the natural advantage that PC players would have over their console cousins, Respawn has done everything it can to ensure the playing field remains as fair as possible by putting some key restrictions in place.

While all three major platforms (Xbox, PlayStation, PC) will be able to mingle with one another, the former two will only be placed in lobbies with the latter if they enter matchmaking lobbies with pre-made groups consisting of both. If, on the other hand, you’d rather not engage with cross-play at all, that’s also an option, though game director Chad Grenier warns that queue times could end up being “very, very long” as a result, due to cross-play not only being activated by default, but the expectation that most players will opt to keep it that way.

Cross-play goes live across all versions of Apex Legends next week, October 6th, alongside a brand new event, Aftermarket Collection. As always, be sure to let us know what you think of the big news down below!