This is a report of a rather technical issue that is independent of any other characteristics, it occurs with every version of EL.

When joining a multiplayer game through the ingame browser, the game has several mechanisms that prevent different game versions from playing in the same game. The game compares the version numbers, and it also compares the Runtime hash key of server and clients. This hashkey is generated from the contents of the games public folder. So if the host changed his public folder files, and the client didnt, they cant play together.

However, this check can be circumvented when inviting players directly via steam. This is bad since it means hosts with my community patch can invite players without patch leading to all sorts of issues and unnecessary bug reports. It can also be used for cheating (host and/or client modify their public folders to make stuff cheaper).

Digging this one up, to report the consequences of this issue reasch further than I first thought.

1. Players with different activated mods can join each other
2. Players that have set --enablemoddingtools can join multiplayer games and use cheats!