Unintentional Star Wars: Jedi Academy cross-play lets PC players wreak havoc on console

Players dipping their toes into Star Wars: Jedi Academy for the first time over the weekend, following Thursday's PS4 and Switch release, have come up against an unexpected obstacle in their quest for Jedi supremacy; long-time PC players are intentionally invading console games to wreak nefarious havoc, thanks to a seemingly unintentional cross-play feature.

Star Wars: Jedi Academy initially launched for PC all the way back in 2003, giving players on the platform a massive 17 years head-start in which to hone their lightsaber skills. Throw in the mouse and keyboard advantage of PC, and players of the freshly launched console ports (as spotted by PC Gamer) weren't exactly thrilled when they ventured into Jedi Academy's multiplayer mode this weekend, only to be utterly obliterated by invaders from the dark side.

"I was excited to play this game online, so I picked it up immediately", wrote a clearly disappointed May Payment on Resetera, "I joined a game where 1 player was absolutely mopping the floor with us and he had .twitchtv in his username. Sure enough, I looked him up and he was playing on PC in a switch server absolutely decimating everyone."

As noted by Max Payment, and corroborated by others across the internet this weekend, all PC players need in order to access a console multiplayer game is a match's IP address, easily accessible from the PS4 or Switch version, which is then entered into their server browser.

Given the rather inelegant steps involved in the process, not to mention the fact that cross-play is very much a one way street at the moment, it's seems highly likely that publisher Aspyr never intended for veterans of almost two decades and console players still wet behind the ears to clash lightsabers in in lop-sided battle.

And, unfortunately, it appears many PC players worming their way into console matches are doing so with particularly malicious intend. "They are also cheating," wrote Resetera user Spider-Man in the same thread, "They could see HP, loadouts of players, had chat and voice and more. It's a bigger disaster than just better players. It's also the massive cheating."

Needless to say, console players are crying out for a fix: "Dudes with the n-word as their name are joining your switch public lobbies and spamming keybinds with various slurs," said exasperated Twitter user ae_Flamingo to Apsyr on Twitter, "Please give us what we want and fix PC players connecting to console matches."

"I think we'd all rather you patch out the IP address being displayed, change the IPs, and do all you can from PC players from entering the servers," wrote JediKnightHub, "Please look into it. It's ruining the experience for the new console players."

Others, though, have suggested cross-play should remain, albeit as an optional feature: "If cross-play is going to obviously be possible its best to embrace it!," wrote another malavai00x on Twitter, "In the long-run it will keep more people playing together! Just make it so newcomers don't have to deal with 17-year vets if they don't want to lol <3".

Aspyr is yet to directly address player concerns on its social media channels, but, hopefully, given how much the issue is proving detrimental to the enjoyment of some Star War: Jedi Academy console players, it'll be able to issue a fix soon.