This phrase can be used in more ways than one, but this time we’re not talking about what’s happening in the game, but what’s happening outside of it!

Yesterday, Earth Defense Force 6 was released in the West (it’s already out in Japan in 2022), but on Steam, things aren’t going quite as Sandlot and D3 Publisher would expect. Valve’s digital platform is seeing a lot of negative reviews (something Take-Two is worried about, as we wrote earlier this week), and currently only 40% of the 2123 reviews are positive, barely reaching the mixed category!

Why all the negative feedback for Earth Defense Force 6? Players don’t like the fact that it requires an Epic Games account to play online. This was not mentioned anywhere before launch (now it is). Sandlot also posted a brief announcement on the game’s Steam page: “For this game, in order to improve cross-play and online functionality, you will need to log in to your Epic Games account to play online. We apologize for the lack of notice. Logging into your Epic Games account is required the first time you play online. Normally, once you have signed in for the first time, you will not need to sign in again.

According to Sandlot, they switched to Epic Online Services for cross-play between PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 during the Japanese launch two years ago because the old network implementation couldn’t handle commonality and matchmaking between different hardware, so a new solution had to be found.

But Earth Defense Force 6 doesn’t have crossplay with the consoles, so you can’t kill bugs with a PlayStation 5 player! Risk of Rain 2 could have followed suit, as it implemented both Steam and Epic Games Store online features. The criticism of the developers is justified by the way, because lack of transparency is never a good thing.

Source: PCGamer, Steam