So I was itching to play Dying Light 2 with my buddy Jim who’s on Xbox while I’m on PlayStation. Grabbed my controller thinking this should be easy. Fired up the game, jumped into multiplayer mode, sent him an invite link through the game. Nothing happened. Waited like five minutes – still zilch. Messaged him on Discord asking if he got anything. “Nope, nada” he replies. Big bummer moment.
My Reality Check Moment
Cracked open my laptop and went digging through forums and official tech notes. Here’s the messy truth I pieced together:
- PC players can only team up with other PC folks – doesn’t matter if they bought it on Steam or Epic store.
- PlayStation and Xbox gangs stick to their own turf. My PS5 can’t link up with Jim’s Xbox Series X.
- Older console generations like PS4 can’t play with current-gen PS5/Xbox Series even within their own brand. Nuts!
Felt annoyed so I decided to test it myself. Borrowed my niece’s Switch and nephew’s Xbox One. Took me three hours jumping between setups:
- First tried connecting my PS5 to Switch – no cross-play option even available in settings.
- Then Xbox One to Series X – got the dreaded “version mismatch” error screen.
- Finally linked my Epic account to Steam friend – that actually worked but took forever with lag spikes.
The Cold Hard Facts
Official support docs confirm this chaos. Basically:
Play together if:
You’re both on PC
OR same PlayStation generation
OR same Xbox generation
Everything else? Forget it. Techland says they’re “exploring possibilities” but honestly sounds like PR talk. They pulled off cross-gen play for Dying Light 1 but dropped the ball here.
Ended up playing solo that night while Jim streamed his Xbox session on Discord. We laughed about how modern gaming still ties us to platform tribes. Maybe someday. Until then – anybody got a spare PC?
