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Elder Scrolls Online ZeniMax Online Studios The Elder Scrolls Online, often referred to as just ESO, is one of the longest-running and most-successful MMO games currently on the market. It’s been around for well over a decade at this point and continues to roll out significant updates and expansions every single year catering to its wide, global player base of both PvE (player-versus-environment, co-op) and PvP (player-versus-player, competitive) players. However, one of the biggest issues with the game right now is the lack of cross-play multiplayer between platforms. Currently, if you play Elder Scrolls Online on your PlayStation 5, that means you can only play with other people also on the same platform. Friends on Xbox or PC are separate as well. This not only makes it difficult to play with friends who may prefer different platforms than you, but it also makes it impossible to carry your account between platforms as well. Recent MMOs like Throne & Liberty and New World: Aeternum have adopted a fully cross-play infrastructure for their servers and even older MMOs such as Final Fantasy XIV have supported some form of cross-play for many years. Games like Destiny 2, Battlefield 6, and Fortnite are all cross-play as well. But both marquee online multiplayer games from ZeniMax companies, ESO and Fallout 76, do not support cross-play. Hopefully, that won’t be the case forever. Cross-Play in ESO Earlier this year, we got the first hint that cross-play might finally be coming to ESO from a Kinda Funny podcast series. During that podcast, Matt Firor mentioned the “underlying tech” was being worked on. MORE FOR YOU Funny enough, this is a topic I’ve been covering at Forbes for ESO specifically for more than six years now. Naturally, during my latest interview with a ZeniMax Online developer, I once again asked about the topic. "We recently had an AMA on Reddit where somebody had asked that question too, where we had talked about it," Associate Design Director at ZeniMax Online Studios, Mike Finnigan, said in a recent interview with Forbes. “It's actively being worked on, but we don't really have any more [to say] other than that. It's not a small initiative, I'll put it that way. So it's one of those things that's, 'Yes, we're looking at it,' but it's not anything we have any updates on yet.” This is arguably the most definitive answer we’ve seen yet on the topic. Instead of vaguely hinting at the possibility in the future, Finnigan states that it’s “actively being worked on,” which is very promising news. Personally, I’ve fallen off from playing ESO because my main character where I have hundreds of hours invested is on PC, but I don’t really play PC games anymore and the friends I’d want to play ESO with are on both PlayStation and Xbox. So, I just don’t really play at all since I don’t want to start over. Fortunately, it sounds like a remedy is on the way for ESO. Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions
