Crossplay is a must-have for many online titles these days. The feature lets you play with your friends (or enemies, if you’re that way inclined) no matter the platform they are on – after all, who can even afford to own more than one platform these days? The recently released Civilization 7 does have crossplay, but it’s technically disabled on PC. Luckily, Firaxis has offered a workaround, meaning you can still play with console players, it’ll just take a tiny bit of work to get things up running.
Essentially, to get crossplay working again after the game’s most recent update, you’ll need to downgrade your version of Civilization 7 to an earlier build (the 1.0.1 Patch 1 version of the strategy game) which Firaxis has made available as a Steam separate branch. The developer makes it clear that “by opting-in you will be playing an older version of the game that does not include the latest PC updates, and is not compatible with saves made on the current version of the game.”
That means any saves you’ve already started won’t be backward-compatible if you choose to use this branch, and you’ll have to start a completely fresh one. On the plus side, any saves you make on the console version will be forward compatible, so if you decide to switch back you’ll be able to continue with that save at least.
In order to opt into the console-compatible version, you need to find your copy of Civilization 7 in your Steam library, right click on it, and select Properties. Go to the section entitled Betas, and there’s a dropdown for Beta Participation where you can select the console-compatible build, though you might have to restart Steam to get it to appear if you can’t see it. After that, it should appear in your Steam library as “Sid Meier’s Civilization VII [console-compatible].”
If you want to go back to the most up-to-date patch, simply return to the Beta Participation page and change the dropdown to ‘None,’ wait for the game to update, and you can carry on as normal. Firaxis also states that it’s “actively working to bring the most recent PC updates” for Civilization 7 to console, and it’s aiming to do so by March, so hopefully you won’t need to jump through these hoops for much longer.
Alternatively, if Civilization 7 really isn’t doing it for you right now, and you’re going to wait for more updates before jumping in, we have a list of best simulation games you can play right now. Or if all this updating and downgrading malarkey already has you on your computer and you’re looking for something completely different, our list of 52 best PC games should be able to help you out.
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