It had been a rocky start for the Advanced Access period of Sid Meier's Civilization VII's release, but developers at Firaxis have been quick to make some temporary repairs as the full launch of the game came. Unfortunately, not everyone has been happy about how it came about. The 4X turn-based strategy game has made a lot of changes from previous entries in the series, but the issues players noted during the first early days of its release were surprisingly not all focused on the expected growing pains.

Although some players still had some negative reactions to the new systems in place in the game, most was more focused on other problems, including game crashes. In the first of Civ 7's planned patches, quick action was taken to address some of the issues reported by players during the Advanced Access period, but because patches can be pushed to PC faster than they are able to be approved on console, this resulted in cross-play being disabled.

As stated on the Steam News page for Civilization 7:

To expedite updates to the PC experience, we will sometimes deploy patches to PC at a different cadence than we do on consoles - including today's Patch 1.0.1. As a result, cross-play between PC players and console players is temporarily disabled. This will have no impact on console players attempting cross-platform play with other console players, nor on PC-to-PC multiplayer. - Civilization 7 Steam Page

Firaxis Addresses Player For Civilization 7

At Least For Players On Computers, Consoles Have To Wait A Bit

Players in the Advanced Access period of Civ 7's launch flooded the game with negative reviews after experiencing several issues, such as the game crashing, frustrations with the UI, and problems with the AI systems. Developers were quick to respond to players and promised patches and updates, which included Patch 1.0.1, which came just prior to the game's full release. At least, it did for PC s.

Patches are generally much easier to deploy on PCs than they are on consoles, which may require different coding and often need to be certified by consoles prior to being pushed out. Therefore, in an effort to get the best experience possible before launch, cross-play between PC and consoles was temporarily turned off to allow PCs to receive the patch immediately.

Civilization 7 Had A Bit Of A Rocky Start, But The Devs Hear Fans' Pleas

Devs Are Working To Address All Issues As Quickly As Possible

Despite the devs trying to push out fixes as quickly as possible, not everyone is happy about the situation, particularly players on consoles. On a Reddit thread started by Excellent-Teacher-37 discussing the patch, there has been a mixed response with some understanding that it is a difficult situation, while others are upset that consoles have to wait, such as this comment by Genshzkan on the thread. Their thoughts, though brief, sum up the consensus of console players on the situation.

While it is hard to say whether it would have been better to hold off on the patch in order to sync up console and PC updates to the same time or do what developers chose to do and patch PC first, ultimately, all systems will receive the updates and cross-play will be returned. This feature is only temporarily removed due to the inconsistency between the systems until the update is able to be applied to all platforms. As the team at Firaxis continues to work on addressing player , hopefully Civilization 7 will soon be everything players have been hoping for.

Source: Sid Meier's Civilization VII/Steam, Excellent-Teacher-37/Reddit, Genshzkan/Reddit