With the release of the Nyakuza Metro DLC, A Hat in Time introduces a very untraditional online multiplayer, Online Party!
One of our main goals for Online Party was that we wanted everyone to be able to play, regardless of their local network setup. Too many times we've seen friends not being able to play together due to a NAT setup, or not being able to open ports, etc.. ultimately the biggest challenge when developing was how to get around those challenges players face.
Everything changed when the wonderful people at Valve gave us beta access to their upcoming Steam Networking API 2.0. This new networking API completely resolved the issues by re-routing through Steam, which was incredible!
I, and all of Gears for Breakfast, want to send a thank you to Valve for producing this tool for Steam, and for working closely with us to implement it within the game. We wouldn't have been able to make Online Party without this build and the support we were given. Being in direct communications with the networking team was invaluable to us, as we were able to propose functionality and get fixes. Special thanks to Fletcher and Tom at Valve for providing us this opportunity and working with us.
We are thrilled to be one of the first games to premiere with this new networking API and hope everyone enjoys Online Party!
-Jonas, Gears for Breakfast