As loyal readers know, Earth Defense Force 6 is one of my very favorite games. My wife and I have collectively put hundreds of ours into it, mostly on the Steam Deck, Valve's portable gaming device. Many of those hours were spent in online co-op, a key selling point of the EDF series. Sadly, however, we can no longer play together from our Decks because the Epic Online Services functionality, used for the game's online mode, no longer works on some Steam Decks.
We first discovered the online issue on a fateful Friday night as my team prepared to enjoy our weekly EDF6 co-op session. My wife got a strange error message upon starting the game. When she tried to hop online, another message followed, informing her that the game was not online. Nothing we tried would get EDF6 to see that her Steam Deck was online: not restarting the device, nor reinstalling the game. It was frustrating, and we ended up playing something else instead. As for my Steam Deck, it has the error at start-up but can still play EDF6 online.
It turns out that it wasn't just one Steam Deck having problems with EDF6. A trip to the game's Steam forums reveals that some other Steam Deck users are affected too. A post discussing the problem first appeared on March 28. Since then, a few other users have chimed in to lament the problem as well. Steam Deck users make up a relatively small portion of the Steam user base, and not all Steam Decks are affected. Still, it really sucks for a game whose online mode used to work to stop working for any portion of the players.
Will D3 Publisher, Sandlot, and/or Epic fix the game's online functionality on Steam Deck? So far, the developer hasn't commented on the issue on the Steam forums, but they've never been very communicative there. We're reporting on the issue and letting D3 Publisher's PR team know about it. Let's hope that the people behind the game will do the right thing and get the affected Steam Deck users back online soon!
Earth Defense Force 6 costs $59.99 on PlayStation and Steam. On PlayStation, a deluxe edition is also available for $89.99 that bundles the game with DLC.