Rocket League - Becoming Free-to-Play with a Catch

Rocket League, the car-football wonder of a title which has garnered success on all platforms, is making a massive change which will affect the player base heavily. The developer of Psyonix revealed in a recent statement that the title is planned to be released as a free-to-play title later on this year. Read on to understand why and other important details. 

The whole point behind this update looks to be to unite the entire player base through cross-play. Ever since its release, Rocket League has regularly been discounted, which is how I personally bought it for less than 10 euros. Besides this idea of 'unity', making it free looks like a move to boost up the competitive scene too. 

Anyways, in order to allow for cross-platform support, players must tie their account to an Epic Games Account. You can probably guess where this is going - on PC, Rocket League will only be available from the Epic Games Store and not on Steam. Don't fret though as if you already own the game on Steam you'll be able to keep playing it freely, but new players will be forced to exclusively get the free title from the Epic Games Store. 

Is this a surprise? 

No, not really. Last year, Psyonix was bought by Epic Games and even back then, everyone knew that following Fortnite's success, Rocket League would imminently become free-to-play and available exclusively to the Epic Games Store. 

How will this affect the game? 

I believe that there are positives and negatives here. The good part is that games should be easier to locate as the player numbers should boost up and Psyonix has come out to state that it's interested in developing exciting in-game events to celebrate the change 5-years after its initial release. 

When thinking of the negatives, moving to a free-to-play format will allow Psyonix to continue aggressively pushing microtransactions which it has been accused of doing so in the past and may now do so without hesitation. 

Beyond the gaming world and looking through the lens of esports, this move is fantastic for competitive Rocket League. Almost all of the top esports out there are free-to-play titles as nobody wants to limit the community through a price tag. 

Let us know if you'll be picking up the title in the comments section below!