Friend can't join A Way Out PC

trying to play i own the game on ea app and can run it fine (with weird resolution issues)

 friend on friend pass tries to join and gets stuck on the authenticating when joining. we have tried everything we can find likke cache reset and repair game and uninstall and vpns and changing accounts but nothing is working. any solutions? we are boh on pc with very powerful pc's so its not an issue of running it