What Gamer Nexus does
Everything below is in the app today, not on a roadmap. Most of it is free. The parts that are not are marked, and what they cost is at the bottom of the page.
Scheduling and matches
The reason the app exists. A match is a game, a platform, a time and a guest list, and everything else hangs off it.
Online or on one couch
A match does not have to be online. Split-screen and LAN nights are first-class, and capacity follows what the game actually supports.
Real timezones
Set yours on your profile and every match shows the host's clock beside your own. A match running past midnight stays on the calendar while it is being played.
RSVPs and a guest list
Invite friends, or open a match to your wider network. Everyone can see who is in and how many places are left, and a match holds as many people as the game actually fits.
Say who won, where there were two sides
Two teams, or two people: report the result and it moves a rating for both of them. A co-op night or a five-handed free-for-all has no two sides, so there is nothing to report and nothing to rate. Nobody has to declare whether a match was competitive - the shape of it already says.
A chat per match
Optional at creation and switchable on later by the host. Teams, rules, house mods, none of which the game has to support.
Supports new games on Release night
A game can go into your library, and onto the schedule, from 24 hours before it launches - so the night is planned before it unlocks rather than after. A match that lands on release night gets its own badge.
Match remindersPremium
A push notification shortly before a match you signed up for starts.
Tournaments
Brackets that run themselves, from your phone. Playing in one is free for everyone - it is creating one that needs Premium.
Pick the format the night deserves
Single elimination for a knockout. Double elimination for two lives each, with a grand final that resets if the player who already lost wins it. Round robin when everyone should play everyone. Swiss when nobody should go home after one bad game, drawing each round against somebody on your record. Group stage when a big field has one afternoon: several small leagues at once, then a knockout between whoever comes top.
Free-for-all heats
A match can hold more than two. Report the finishing order and the top of each heat goes through, so a racing or battle royale night runs as a proper bracket. Heats work in single elimination, round robin, swiss and group stage.
Best of three, five or seven
A fixture can be a series rather than one game, and it ends the moment somebody takes the majority, so a three-nil in a best of five stops there. One game is mostly variance, which is why a final deserves more than one.
A timetable to plan around
Say how long a match should take and how much slack to leave after each round, and every round gets a due time and the event gets a finish estimate. Nothing acts on it: a round that started itself while the last one was still being played would be the schedule making an assumption at the exact moment it turned out to be wrong.
Check in before the bracket is drawn
Ask everyone to confirm they are there, and anyone who has not answered is left out and the seeds close up around them. Far easier than finding out in round one, when their opponent is waiting for a match that is never going to be played.
Arrange the field by hand
Seed at random, by who joined first, by rating, or drag the order into whatever you know about the people in the room. An unrated field is shuffled even when you ask for ratings, because a bracket that looks considered and is arbitrary is worse than one that is plainly arbitrary.
A join code, or a QR to hold up
Six characters anyone can use to get in, without being findable in a friend search first. Read it out, share the link, or show the code on screen for somebody to scan. Someone without the app lands on a page that tells them what it is.
Joining one costs nothing
Accept an invite, play your matches and report your results on any tier. Only the organizer needs Premium, the same way only the host of a public match does.
Teams enter as one competitor
A seat in the bracket holds a team as readily as a player, at whatever team size the tournament is set to. A crew can enter as itself, or a team can be put together for the night. A captain can also sign their own team up for somebody else's team tournament, the same way a player joins one.
Find one to join
Public tournaments that are still taking players show up in Discover, beside public matches and people looking to play.
Nobody plays until you say so
A match sits waiting until it is called on, and a whole round can be started in one tap. Players are only told they are up when their match actually begins, so a bracket of sixty-four does not summon everyone at once.
The loser confirms
The winner reports, the loser confirms, and the bracket moves on. Nobody has to chase anybody.
Hand the bracket to a referee
Appoint someone to run matches for you: start them, call time, record results and settle a no-show. A referee never plays in the tournament they are officiating, and they see exactly which matches are waiting on them. Being asked to referee costs nothing.
Seeded by who is actually best
Results earn a rating per game, and a bracket can be seeded from it so the first round is not a coin toss. It is earned from tournaments you have finished, and a new competitor is not ranked until they have played enough to mean something.
You're up
When a match of yours is called on, a bar says so on whatever screen you are on. Nothing is locked while you play: during a match you are in the game rather than in this app, so the answer is to be impossible to miss rather than to make everything else impossible.
Leaving without freezing it
An evening falls apart and somebody has to drop out. Their remaining matches are decided rather than left hanging, so one person's change of plan never stalls everyone else's bracket, and a seat that has not played yet goes to the first person on standby. It moves nobody's rating in either direction.
The record stays on your profile
Entered, won, runner-up and your best finish, with a rating per game. It says what it means without naming the event, so a quiet tournament stays quiet.
Spectating
Follow the tournaments your friends are in and watch the standings change. A public bracket can be handed to somebody with no account at all, by link or by code, and they get the bracket and the table and nothing else.
Create a bracketPremium to create
Set how many players it takes and change that while the roster is still open, decide whether people can ask to join or only the ones you invite, and choose whether a result needs confirming before the bracket moves on. Start it when everyone is in and it advances itself. Change your mind afterwards too: the name and the timings at any point, the format and who can find it until the bracket is drawn.
Your library and the catalog
Every game you own, across every platform you own it on, single-player included.
A gamer tag on every platform
Your handle on each platform you play on, and on PC your name on each launcher: Epic, EA, GOG Galaxy, Ubisoft Connect and Battle.net. It is how friends know where to add you, and it is the first thing people search by.
A walk through gaming history
Platforms opens on the current generation. History walks you back room by room, from Pong to today: each era's platforms, the games that defined it and the moments that changed everything.
One PC VR, one Meta Quest
Every PC headset counts as one PC VR platform, because a PC VR game plays on whichever headset is plugged in. The Quest family is one Meta Quest platform.
Backlog buddies
Friends with the same multiplayer game in their backlog show up on its page, and one tap sets up a match with them already invited.
Editions, remasters and DLC
Remakes and expanded editions are searchable and linked back to their base game, and the DLC you own sits against the game it belongs to.
Where to buy it
Storefront badges on every game - Steam, GOG, Xbox, PlayStation and the rest - so you can see where it is sold before you plan a night around it.
A page for the hardware too
Every platform has a page of its own: the models it shipped as, what is inside each one, when they arrived and where. Then the games, most played first.
One game leads to the next
Every genre, theme, game mode and perspective on a game page is a way in. Tap Horror, or Co operative, or First person, and the catalogue narrows to it.
Where to go next
At the foot of every game, the ones IGDB puts beside it. Suggestions somebody curated, not six shooters picked because you looked at a shooter.
Search that returns what you meant
Relevance first, then popularity. “halo” puts Combat Evolved and Halo 3 at the top, and “Dark Souls 3” finds “Dark Souls III”.
Steam and Xbox Integration
Link either by signing in to it, so what shows on your profile is genuinely yours. Both integrations are Premium.
Find friends by their gamer tag
Search by Steam persona or Xbox gamertag to find the people you already play with.
Linked by signing inPremium
Steam links through Steam's own sign-in and Xbox through Xbox sign-in, so the library on your profile is proved rather than claimed.
Your library imports itselfPremium
Owned games, playtime, achievement progress and recently played, then kept current on its own. There is a switch to turn that off.
What your friends are playingPremium
Live activity from Steam and Xbox, each with its own opt-out, and a warning up front about private profiles.
Game Pass, split three waysPremium
A game says whether it is on Game Pass for console, for PC, or through EA Play, because those are three different subscriptions and “can we all play this tonight” depends on which.
Live game serversPremium
The host picks a server with room for the whole party, and everyone else finds it from the match screen.
Friends, chat and finding people
The social half. Who you play with, how you talk to them, and how new people find you.
One search for adding friends
Gamer tag, Steam persona or Xbox gamertag, all from the same search box. Name and email work too, if the other person has allowed it.
Invite the person you met through a friend
Search a bracket's invite list by gamer tag and it reaches your friends and their friends, not just the people you have added. Somebody further out than that gets a join code instead of a dead end.
Crews
The group you play with every week, named once, with its own emblem. Scheduling a match for a crew invites all of them, and a crew keeps its own chat and its own match history. A crew's chat is a group chat, so it counts towards your plan's.
A crew runs itself
Any member can add the games the crew plays and take the crew into a match, while adding people is the owner's. Ownership can be handed to somebody else, so running one is not a life sentence and leaving does not mean deleting it.
A crew has a record of its own
Play another crew and the result moves both crews' ratings, not just the players'. Change the line-up and the number follows, partly: two rosters of the same people do not win at the same rate, and the difference is the part a crew earns by playing together.
Invite by link
A match can carry a link anybody can open to join, so somebody you met in a lobby last night does not have to be added as a friend first. It is the host's to hand out and the host's to turn off, and everything else still applies: a cancelled or full match turns them away.
Every Friday, without asking every Friday
Set a match to repeat weekly or fortnightly and the next one is created once this one has finished, with the same people invited again. A crew night re-reads the crew, so anybody who joined since is in it. Cancel one to stop it repeating.
In your own calendar
Copy your upcoming matches into a Gamer Nexus calendar on your phone, which is what carries them on to Google or iCloud. Press it again whenever something moves and it updates what is already there. A match that is cancelled, or that you said no to, is taken back out.
Teams inside a match
Split the people coming into named sides, each with a chat of its own. A team can be a crew turning up together, or put together for the one night.
Direct and group chat
Messages arrive without a refresh, with read state, search and per-conversation mute. Reply to a particular message and the bubble quotes it, react with a tap, and see when somebody is typing. Leave a group you are done with, or take a conversation off your list.
Looking to play
A short-lived post saying you want to play something, so people can come to you. Free, and it expires on its own after two weeks.
Public matchesPremium to host
Open a match to the whole community rather than just your friends, with a join preview so people know what they are walking into. Joining somebody else's is free.
News, events and the calendar
What is happening in the games you own, in one feed and one calendar.
Headlines tagged to your library
IGN, Polygon, PC Gamer and more, matched against the games, studios and series you follow so the feed is about what you actually play.
Your want list, on sale
Mark a game you want and hear about it when it goes on sale or lands on Game Pass. Push alerts for sales stay off until you switch them on.
Sales and Game Pass arrivals
Steam sales, Xbox store deals and Game Pass comings and goings land on the feed and the calendar alongside showcases and your own matches.
What you follow is putting out
Follow a game, a studio or a series and your home feed carries what they are about to release, with the add-ons for games you already follow. Each row says which follow it came from.
And a nudge on the day it lands
When something you follow is out, you hear about it once. Not when it is announced, not every night it sits in a list, and never twice. Turn it off on its own if you would rather find it yourself.
The games a sale covers, tapped
A sale or a Game Pass rail lists what it covers, ticks the ones already in your library, and opens any of the rest on its page here, where you can see who else has it and put a match in the calendar.
Events that run for days
A week-long sale dots every day it covers on the calendar, and carries an Ongoing badge for as long as it is live.
Hide what you do not care about
Dismiss any feed event, on any tier. It is reversible from the calendar, so nothing is lost.
Only the news you care aboutPremium
Cut the feed down to headlines about the games, studios and platforms you own or follow, and leave the rest out. One console covers that whole family's news, so a filtered feed still has something in it.
Save an articlePremium
Kept as a snapshot, so it survives the source taking the page down.
Your account and your privacy
What other people see is yours to decide, and leaving is one screen.
No password to remember
Sign in with Google, or with Apple on an iPhone or iPad. We never see a password, and there is none to reset.
Look before you sign up
The news, the catalogue and the public tournaments are readable without an account. An account is what keeps a library, lines up a match, and puts you in a bracket instead of watching one.
Visibility under your control
Whether your platforms, games, genres and activity show on your profile is a setting. Being findable by email is off unless you turn it on.
Block and report
The floor the whole public-matchmaking side is built on. A block is mutual and immediate. Players, matches, messages, tournaments and crews can all be reported right where you see them, and slurs are kept out of the names and text strangers read.
Works without a signal
Lose your connection and the app still opens on your schedule, friends, library and recent chats as you last saw them. RSVPs, follows, pins and chat messages wait on your phone and send themselves when you are back online.
Tell us when something breaks
A Feedback screen inside the app for reporting a bug or sending an idea our way.
Appear offlinePremium
Play without showing up as online, while still seeing everyone else.
Your own profile photoPremium
Use any photo you like as your profile picture. Every photo is checked before anyone else sees it, and its location data is removed.
Pick your lookPremium to unlock them all
Nexus and Light are free for everyone, and the rest come with a subscription. Lose Premium and you land on the free theme closest to the one you had, not a jarring flip.
Want to try it?
Gamer Nexus is in closed testing on Android and iPhone ahead of public launch. Testing is free and you can leave whenever you like.
Something here not behaving? Tell us. Bug reports and ideas can also be sent from inside the app.