Rocket League is going free-to-play and (sorta) leaving Steam
Rocket League is one of the standout hits from the outgoing generation of consoles, and now the vehicular-soccer battler is going free-to-play. Developer Psyonix plans to make the move later this summer. As part of this shift in business models, the company will also roll out its biggest update yet.
Psyonix promises to provide more details about the timing of the update in the next few weeks. But for now, it is confirming that it’s going to overhaul how Rocket League’s Tournaments and Challenge systems work. More important, the studio is also adding cross-platform progression. So you can carry your items, Rocket Pass progression, and rank from PC to Nintendo Switch or any other platform. To take advantage of cross-platform features, you’ll need to log into an Epic Account like in Fortnite. Psyonix is a subsidiary of Epic Games.
Of course, when Rocket League goes free-to-play, existing players will get special bonus rewards as part of a Legacy status. This includes all Rocket League-branded downloadable content, special cosmetics, and a title that lists the year you started playing.
Once Rocket League goes free, you can download it here for yourself.
Moving Rocket League’s future to Epic Games Store
The value of Rocket League to Epic is clear. It is still among the most-played games on Steam and the consoles. It regularly hits 70,000 peak concurrent players, according to Steam’s stats page. That’s enough to put it in the top 20 most-played games on that service every day.
After Epic Games acquired Psyonix last May, Steam players worried about continued support for Rocket League on Steam. And now Epic is making its move to peel the future of the game away from Valve’s online store.
To be clear, if you own Rocket League on Steam when it goes free-to-play, you will continue to have access to it going forward. You’ll also get all of the updates and new content. But Epic is not making the game available for download to new players on Steam. Instead, you’ll have to go to the Epic Games Store if you want to get in on the action.
This is part of Epic’s efforts to establish its store as a viable alternative to Steam on PC.
