Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War follows in Modern Warfare’s footsteps with the inclusion of crossplay. PC, Xbox, and PlayStation owners can game together in the latest entry in the acclaimed franchise — or that would be the case if users weren’t being met with a particularly frustrating cross-platform play bug.
Black Ops Cold War players have taken to the game’s Reddit page to reveal that there are issues with forming parties across different platforms. Users have explained that an error message (“Failed to Join Party. Unable to join party (3)”) pops up when players on different systems try to play together. The problem seems to be affecting PC and PS4 sessions, along with PC and Xbox One sessions, but there have been instances of PS4 and Xbox One users trying to game together and being unable to do so.
The problem stems from players not being able to see if their friends are online even if they are signed into their Activision accounts. Users have tried to join parties if they are invited by seemingly offline friends, but they get disconnected immediately if they accept invites. If you are looking for a solution, there is something you can try. This hasn’t been verified by Activision yet, but plenty of Black Ops Cold War players have found success when using this fix.
To solve this bug, you will need to delete your friends from your Activision account friends list. To do this, head to the Social menu of your account. Scroll down to the friends you want to game with, click on their profile, and select the delete option. After that, re-add them. You will need their Activision account ID to add them to your friends list again. Restart the Activision client and they should appear online in your friends list.
If this doesn’t work first time, delete and re-add them over and again until you can join a party that they set up. It is annoying that it could take 10 attempts to get this to work, but it is a surefire way to join a crossplay party in Black Ops Cold War.
