Outriders crossplay is fixed — but your inventory could still get wiped out

Outriders sometimes feels like two separate games in the same package. There’s the fun, creative multiplayer shooter with a better-than-average story and lots of customizable character-building. There’s also the broken, buggy online component that can decimate your inventory — if it lets you log in at all.

The good news is that the most recent Outriders patch has solved a significant problem: crossplay. While cross-platform multiplayer wasn’t working properly before, the game now lets PlayStation, Xbox and PC players all team up at-will. The downside, though, is that the patch did not successfully address a devastating bug that completely wiped out players’ inventories. In fact, this bug now seems more prevalent than it was before.

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The information about crossplay and inventory bugs comes straight from the Outriders team. A Twitter post celebrated the crossplay fix. Similarly, a Reddit thread instructed players to rest easy about the inventory issue — shortly before changing tack and warning players that their gear may not be safe just yet.

First, the good news. On Twitter, the dev team proclaimed:

“With this patch now available on the PC, PlayStation and Xbox, Crossplay is now live between these platforms – Happy hunting!”

The patch worked as intended, sort of. Based on Twitter replies, Outriders players are having less trouble teaming up across platforms than before. But a number of players logged in, got kicked out, rejoined the game and found that their entire inventories were gone. This obviously makes playing the game a bit more difficult, particularly at higher levels, where players lost tons of rare, expensive and potentially irreplaceable loot.

According to the Reddit thread, Square Enix is aware of the inventory bug, and has made fixing it a “top priority.” The developers did not offer any solutions or workarounds, so the best way to safeguard your gear is simply not to log into the game. It’s not clear how long it will take Square Enix to fix the problem, as the company has been working on a patch for at least four days.

The good news is that if you did lose your inventory, you’ll get it back, but not exactly as you had left it. While Square Enix can’t replace every item precisely as it was, the company has a detailed plan for making sure that every player gets something similar to what he or she lost.

“We still intend to run a one-off mass restoration so anyone affected by this will still see their items restored,” a Square Enix rep wrote on Reddit. “We will only be able to restore the most valuable tiers of items lost, e.g. Epics and Legendaries. We will be unlikely to restore an inventory full of blue gear … Restored items may not be [sic] have the exact same stats as the lost items.”

While every player will have to decide whether it’s worth the risk, Tom’s Guide recommends waiting until the next patch comes out before diving back into Outriders. A looter-shooter without the loot is only half the experience it should be.