The award-winning co-op game It Takes Two is finally verified for Steam Deck, and no longer requires the EA App to play: It now makes use of the Steam friends list for sending game invites and joining up with other players, and uses Steam Cloud for saves. That's good news for players but also bad news for anyone relying on EA App Cloud Saves, because, well, they don't work anymore. (But don't worry, there's a workaround.)
It Takes Two, the tale of an unhappy couple who are turned into dolls by a talking book in order to save their relationship (yes, seriously), was a surprise hit in 2021: We called it "brilliant co-op adventure with a wild amount of variety," and as if that wasn't enough it also claimed Best Multiplayer Game at the Golden Joystick Awards and Game of the Year (along with Best Family Game and Best Multiplayer Game) at The Game Awards. It also holds a "very positive" rating across more than 141,000 user reviews on Steam.
Until now, the Steam release of It Takes Two has required the EA App launcher, which is kind of a headache, so it's good to see that gone. Also good is that even with the EA launcher no longer required, you can still play with people through the EA App if you want to: "When inviting a friend to play, choose the 'EA Friends List' option in-game," the update FAQ states. "From there, you can add their EA Account to your EA friends list, and send a game invite to them through EA."
The one hitch in the plan is those EA App Cloud saves. If you have your It Takes Two saves on your PC, as God and nature intended, they'll be automatically uploaded to the Steam Cloud when you start the game. But if, for some reason, you were relying on the EA App Cloud exclusively to store your saves, kiss 'em goodbye: "Due to technical limitations, save games previously stored in the EA App Cloud are no longer accessible," EA said.
That's almost certainly a very small slice of the total It Takes Two player base, but EA isn't leaving them hanging: As a workaround, it's posted a completed save game, which you can download and copy into the C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\ItTakesTwo directory. Once that's done, you can fire up the game and then use the Chapter Select menu to start playing from any chapter in the game.
It's not a perfect solution, and EA apologized for the inconvenience, but you know what? It works. And it's really not all that unusual: I'm sure most of us have seen requests for completed saves posted on Reddit or your gaming forum of choice by gamers whose saves have met an unfortunate, unexpected end. This just cuts out the middleman. (And if you didn't lose a cloud save but just want a complete-game save so you can jump into the middle of the action for some reason, well, that's fine too.)
Even with this new update in place, you will still need an EA account to connect to servers for online play—but it's not necessary for local play or using Steam Remote Play Together. If you're accessing the game via Friend's Pass, you can continue to do so using the EA App Friend's Pass, or install the new Steam version instead.
