Setting up skirmishes with friends, meanwhile, was a hit-or-miss proposition ahead of launch. Inviting friends through either Steam or Origin worked most of the time, though roughly one-third of the friend-only matches I tried loading resulted in some glitch, ranging from a mouse cursor disappearing to a match never starting to even a wild crash of visuals on both ends. For the majority of my private matches that loaded, they worked just fine—although in each of these cases, C&C:RC drops the ball on two crucial quality-of-life features: keeping lobbies together after a match ends and letting players cleanly surrender. Your only option is to rage-quit, which C&C:RC responds to by filling empty seats with AI players—which is admittedly welcome for matches containing up to eight players.
If you own the collection on Origin and want to play against Steam friends, or vice versa, you can't send them direct session invites. Your only option is to host a publicly visible game, then tell your cross-platform friend to refresh the public "join" list as quickly as possible to take up any of your session's open slots. C&C:RC does not support closed, password-protected lobbies at this time, which is a bummer. I'm happy a workaround is available at launch, at least, for cross-platform friends willing to jump through hoops, but it feels a little silly for 2020.
arstechnica.com
