Apex Legends Crossplay Test Goes Live on US-West Servers

Apex Legends shipped a small but consequential update on October 6, and the headline isn't a new Legend or weapon — it's a matchmaking experiment that changes how the game finds your next squad. Starting October 7 at roughly 10am PT, Respawn Entertainment switched cross-play on by default for every platform queuing into US-West servers, folding PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch 2 players into the same matchmaking pool unless they manually back out.

01What Changed in the October 6 Update

The patch notes posted to Apex Legends' official Steam news feed are short, and that's by design: this is a live test, not a season launch. Respawn's stated goal is to shorten queue times and tighten matchmaking skill bands by pulling from a bigger combined player pool instead of splitting PC and console players into separate queues. The test is scoped to US-West servers only, and Respawn says it will run through the end of the current season on November 3.

Two smaller fixes rode along with the test. A floor-geometry bug in Terraformer, one of the points of interest on Broken Moon, had let players clip through the ground into unintended spaces; that exploit is now closed. Respawn also fixed Gibraltar's skydive emote, whose audio was continuing to play after he'd already landed.

02Cross-Play Is Now the Default, Not an Opt-In

Apex Legends has supported cross-play since 2019, but console players have historically been matched separately from PC unless they partied up with a PC friend. This test inverts that default for US-West: every console player is now dropped into the combined PC-and-console pool automatically. You don't need to enable anything to be affected by it — the change only shows up if you go looking for the toggle.

Respawn's reasoning lines up with a complaint that's followed the game for years, especially outside peak hours: thin matchmaking pools on console-only queues can mean longer waits and wider skill gaps as the system widens its search to fill a lobby. Merging the pools is the most direct fix available, at the cost of putting console players back in the same lobbies as mouse-and-keyboard players by default.

03How to Opt Out

Console players who want the old split-queue behavior back can turn cross-play off from the in-game settings menu; Respawn has not removed that option, it's simply no longer the default. PC players were already matched together regardless of this test, so there's nothing to toggle on that side. Anyone who opts out should expect the queue times the test is specifically trying to avoid, particularly during off-peak hours on US-West.

04Where This Sits in the Marked Season

The test lands partway through Apex Legends: Marked, the season Respawn launched on August 4 with a full Bloodhound rework, buffs to Loba and Rampart, an overhauled energy weapon system, new Corrupted Attachments and a reworked World's Edge. Marked's second split began September 15 with its own patch, which leaned harder into balance than into the base game's infrastructure: Conduit, Fuse, Catalyst and Bloodhound all got buffed, Axle and Seer got toned down, loot bins were stuffed with more healing and ammo, and the Triple Take, Bocek Compound Bow and Charge Rifle all came out stronger.

That same Split 2 patch also introduced a new anti-cheat layer that scans for unauthorized controller hardware or software across PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch 2, with Respawn warning that console play doesn't exempt anyone from a ban if the system flags their setup. None of that is new as of this week, but it's the backdrop the cross-play test is running against: a season already in the middle of retooling how matches get decided, now also retooling who you're matched against in the first place.

05What to Watch Next

Respawn hasn't published hard numbers from the test yet, and the October 6 notes don't commit to making the default permanent. The season ending November 3 gives a natural checkpoint: expect Respawn to either expand the cross-play default to more regions, roll it back to opt-in, or stay quiet and let it ride into whatever Marked's successor season brings. For now, the practical takeaway is simple — if your queue times on US-West suddenly feel shorter this week, this is why.