Developer SloClap has provided an update addressing the absence of crossplay in Rematch, apologizing to the community and acknowledging they should have informed players earlier that this feature wouldn't be available at launch.
Rematch, created by the team behind Sifu and Absolver, is a fast-paced 5v5 online multiplayer soccer game played from a third-person view. The recent beta attracted significant attention, with 1.9 million participants across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. However, fans expressed frustration when SloClap confirmed crossplay would not be included at launch, a disclosure made just hours before early access began.
In a blog post released to coincide with Rematch's official launch on June 19, SloClap explained the challenges that led to this situation.
"We understand many of you were looking forward to playing Rematch with friends across different platforms from day one," the studio stated.
"We worked tirelessly to include crossplay at launch, but as this is our studio's first crossplay title, we encountered unexpected technical hurdles that prevented us from having the feature ready in time. We should have communicated sooner once it became clear crossplay wouldn't be available at launch, and we sincerely apologize for the disappointment and inconvenience this caused our players.
"Ensuring our players can enjoy Rematch with their friends is extremely important to us. Alongside addressing bugs, implementing crossplay remains our top priority. We're dedicated to rolling out this feature as quickly as possible and will share a more specific timeline soon. From a technical perspective, we already have a basic functional version, but we need to integrate the necessary interfaces, conduct thorough debugging and refinement, and pass console certification processes. While these steps take time, we're pushing forward as rapidly as we can."
The blog post also tackled performance problems that surfaced during the early access period, emphasizing that resolving these issues is a key focus. Players have reported lag, stuttering, frame rate drops, and server-client synchronization problems affecting match quality.
"For example, we're addressing instances where players sometimes can't interact with the ball, and situations where player characters and the ball appear to move erratically across the field," SloClap explained. The team is actively working on these concerns while also fixing critical bugs that cause game crashes, post-goal freezes, and menu lockouts.
Beyond immediate fixes, SloClap mentioned they're developing future updates "with exciting new content and features planned for the game." Their focus spans four key areas: core gameplay improvements, competitive features like tournament systems and elite leaderboards, social components including crossplay and squad spectating, and casual play enhancements such as AI-controlled bots for training.
SloClap concluded by reminding players they're a relatively small studio, and implementing all these features will require time. "Please keep in mind our team size limitations—these developments take time, so we appreciate your patience as we work through our roadmap," they noted.
Despite the launch challenges and missing crossplay functionality, Rematch has received generally positive feedback on Steam, earning a 'Mostly Positive' user review rating. At the time of writing, the game had 35,595 concurrent players on Valve's platform, with numbers expected to grow during its first weekend.
