[2.0.21] Not able to join Steam friend in multiplayer

[ilikegreenbelts]

1. What did you do?
Tried joining Steam friend's multiplayer game through the "Join game" button in Steam friends list while Factorio was already launched.

2. What happened?
Literally nothing. No popup, no error, nothing happened.

3. What did you expect to happen instead? It might be obvious to you, but do it anyway!
In our case get a popup to enter the password for our multiplayer game.

4. Does it happen always, once, or sometimes?
Sometimes.

Extra info:
We tried creating a new save file on both our computers, neither of us could join each other. Multiplayer over Steam friends was working perfectly for us on November 24 2024 with latest non experimental version at that time. Neither of us changed anything in our general home network or windows installations.

After some further testing, for whatever reason, specifically when *I* host a new or existing save file without the "public" host option ticked (so only steam and lan ticked) my friend can join me but only when i specifically invite him to join my game through steam friends. If he tries to click "Join game" on my username in steam friends list it does not do anything. Having my friend go through these exact same steps to host does not work for either a new or existing save, I can not join him through either Steam invite or the "Join game" through Steam friends list.

The log file included is when I try to join my friends game. I get the same "Failed to get lobby game server information." when trying to join through Steam invite or "Join game" through steam friends list.

[Rseding91]

Moved to technical help. Nothing about steam networking has changed in the last 3+ years.

[ilikegreenbelts]

I don't need technical help. I found a workaround so we are able to play. Simply reporting that things worked perfectly last week and now suddenly after a patch things have been behaving strangely/not working. We were able to reproduce this issue across multiple reboots during the course of a few days and trying multiple things to get it working normally again, which is why I even took the time to file a bug report.

Please close this thread if it's not being investigated, hopefully this is a one off weird coincidence and there are no more reports like this.

Edit: I will try and get a log from my friend's computer when he tries to host and it doesn't work to add to this post in case somebody comes upon this thread via google search.

[Rseding91]

""Failed to get lobby game server information" indicates an issue with steam - which is outside of our control. Maybe they released some update recently that caused it, or the steam client needs to be updated to fix it.

[ilikegreenbelts]

As of the new Factorio patch 2.0.23 this issue has been resolved.

[Rseding91]

As of the new Factorio patch 2.0.23 this issue has been resolved.

Strange, as nothing steam networking changed in this or any previous 2.0.x release.

[Jeroen45]

I had the same issue in patch 2.0.28
I could join other multiplayer games through steam, and other people joining the same friend I had troubles with joining had the same issue.
After spending hours trying to figure it out, we resolved the issue by my friend hosting the game via "Host game -> Load Save" instead of "Continue hosting <name>". I hope this helps others with the same issue.

EDIT: We just had the exact same issue again and this did not work this time around, so we're back to looking for a solution.