![Steam forum post by Priscilla, flagged [developer]: We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused by this issue, and we will try to find alternative solutions. For the current situation, we suggest you join our official discord server and open a ticket.](/media/evidence/dev-reply-region-lock.webp)
Crossplay: yes. Now check the two gates that actually fail.
Cross-platform matchmaking is officially confirmed and the game launched on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 on the same day, so a PC player and a PS5 player queueing together is the intended case rather than a workaround. Controller support is confirmed on top of that, so nobody has to switch input device. That is the whole platform answer, and it is almost never why two people cannot play together. The two gates that do fail are the region you were assigned and the number of people in your party.
- PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5, launched the same day, with cross-platform matchmaking named in the official launch material.
- Region is assigned by the system from factors including your account region, and there is no manual selector.
- Queues are solo or trio. There is no duos mode, so a pair cannot matchmake as a pair.
- One input caveat that is about hardware rather than platform: loot is shared across the squad rather than instanced, so pickups are a race, and creators measured controller as slower at it than keyboard and mouse.
The region gate — the one that will bite you
Server assignment is determined by the system using factors including your account region, and there is no way to choose. That single design decision is what turns “can my friend and I play together” from a platform question into a geography one: you can be on different platforms, but you largely cannot be on different continents. EU and NA players report being unable to party at all, and the workarounds that circulate involve one player accepting a badly degraded connection so the other can play normally.
- You cannot pick your region. It is assigned, and the assignment is not exposed anywhere in the client.
- Players report being held on North American servers while physically in Europe, at around 150ms.
- This is the same root cause as the EU lag complaints, which is why those two questions keep arriving together.
- Progress does not carry across, so “just start again on my side” costs one of you the account.
The party gate — there is no duos queue
Matchmaking offers solo or trio and nothing in between, which catches a lot of pairs who assume the problem is their platforms. Two players can still run a trio: turn squad fill off and you keep the three-mission reward while playing a man down. That is the whole workaround, and it is a real trade rather than a fix — a trio short one body is measurably harder, particularly on Brandrgarde.
So: can you play with your friend?
Answer it in the order that decides the outcome, which is the order the checker above uses. Party size first, because it is the cheapest to check and fails on its own terms. Then region, because no setting fixes it. Platform last, because that is the gate that passes. Different platform, same region, three of you: yes, and that is the case the feature was built for. Same platform, different region: this is where people get stuck. Different platform and different region: you are fighting the region problem, not the crossplay one, and the honest answer is that one of you will have a bad connection.
What would change this answer
A manual region selector, or a dedicated EU region that makes the current assignment less punishing, would turn the second gate from a wall into a preference. A duos queue would remove the third. A Bellring staff account answered the REGION LOCK thread on the Steam board during the launch window, apologised, and said they would try to find alternative solutions — which is an acknowledgement rather than a commitment, and the reason this page will need revisiting rather than rewriting.