Epic Games – best known in recent years for its insanely popular free-to-play battle royale game Fortnite – has acquired Rocket League developer Psyonix for an unspecified amount.
Psyonix revealed the news over on its own website and at the same time reassured its fanbase it would continue to be a community-driven game:
Today is a big day for us here at Psyonix because, just as the headline says, we’re officially joining the Epic Games family.
Your first question to news like this might be, "What does this mean for Rocket League and its community?" We’re happy to say that the answers are only positive. Rocket League always has been and always will be a community-driven game, and now that we have joined forces with Epic, we will be able to serve our community in even bigger and better ways!
Epic will allow Psyonix to grow the game and further develop its eSports ecosystem:
In the long-term, we expect to bring Rocket League to the Epic Games store and to leverage our new relationship to grow the game in ways we couldn’t do on our own before. We believe that bringing Rocket League to new audiences with more support is a win for everybody.
We think this is a great move for the Rocket League Esports ecosystem because it significantly increases our potential reach and resources, just like it does for the game itself. We really do believe that you'll find our future in esports to be very exciting.
One of the main concerns initially was whether or not the Steam version of the game would continue to be sold and supported. Psyonix has since confirmed these users will still be able to play the game and look forward to future updates. For the console versions, it should be fun and games as usual.
What are your thoughts about Psyonix joining the Epic family? Tell us down below.
[source engadget.com]
Comments 45
Not a big fan of epic so this kinda worries me. I'm sure steam will still get support but I KNOW the epic version will get more goodies.
Is this a good thing...? They say it is, but is it really?
......At least it's not EA.
The Fortnite money's really getting to their heads.
NONONONONONONONONONONONONO PLEEEEEEEAAAAAAASSSSEE
Thanos_aquiring_Infinity_Stone.gif
Guess there'll be Fortnite ads on some arenas now....
The Borderlands 3 gameplay event today pretty much guaranteed they have a hit on their hands as an exclusive.
This is just icing on the cake.
@Joeynator3000 Epic's partially owned by Tencent, though.
I played both Fortnite and Rocket League to see what all the hype was about. I quite enjoyed Fortnite but fell out of it because I'm no good at shooters. I just couldn't get into Rocket League at all, sadly
"Your first question to news like this might be, "What does this mean for Rocket League and its community?" We’re happy to say that the answers are only positive."
Being owned by epic doesn't seem like a positive to me.
@Not_Soos Same here, on Rocket League. It looks like a really fun game when you’re watching high-level matches, but then you go to play it and it just feels like a lot of aimless driving and flailing around in hopes of making contact with the ball. And most of that contact will be random and useless. That’s my experience, anyway.
First Borderlands 3 and now Rocket League....
Yuck. I hate the whole situation with Epic right now. Competition is a good thing when the consumer benefits. But buying up exclusives and studios with zero benefit to the consumer seems like a red flag to me.
It seems like when Sony/MS/Nintendo buy up studios it's to save them/fund games/invest in a studio that has worked well with them. Epic is just buying up stuff that is already funded with their Fortnite money. Epic is the sequel to EA (RIP Bioware), and sequels are almost always worse...
@BAN Not every game is for every person but if you think it looks fun, you might want to give it another try. Watch a few low level "tips" videos and run through some of the training. I gave up on it at first then came back later and really enjoy it now. I'm not good by any means but I'm no longer just flailing around and it is really fun.
They're gonna add emotes for the cars and make it free to play once the driver royale mode becomes popular.
I like Rocket League a lot. It’s a shame they didn’t want to remain independent. On PC I’ve only used GOG and Steam, neither of which acquire game studios and hog exclusives. They know the Fortnite well will run dry eventually.
@SudoCoffee I have, believe it or not. Spent a lot of time with it, since I paid money for it. It just never stopped being a bunch of people desperately trying to do something that almost never happens, which eventually got to be too boring for me to overcome.
But to be fair, I’ve never been super into online competitive games, so it was almost a foregone conclusion that I wouldn’t get hooked by this one. But a big reason I bought it is that I want important/big third-party games to get support on Nintendo’s systems, and also it was cheap, so I’m not too bummed about it.
Do we already start again with "the vore" of the small developers with have a big success? even though for now, luckily it is not EA, neither Microsoft nor Activision.
Good for them. May they live happily ever after.
@SakuraHaruka Microsoft, Activision and even EA are better than Epic Games.
Epic Games is the reason I won't be buying Shakedown Hawaii before it's released on Steam next year.
That goes for any game that's exclusive to their trash store. And most likely next year I will simply forget those games exist.
And no, I'm not installing Chinese spyware for any game.
@BensonUii
That will depend on how Epic will handle the Steam copies that are already sold.
And if the games will require the Epic launcher to play.
All in all this is just a business deal, it's the aftermath that will determine the feedback from the users.
When will Rocket League become Epic exclusive? I haven't had the chance to pick it up on Steam yet.
I love RocketLeague. I dislike Epic and can’t stand the furore around Fornite. I’m not sure how I feel about this news.
Good for them
@BAN I guess there's training options, but the problem with Rocket League is that unlike Fortnite, you can't be terrible but still have fun. In Fortnite you can wander around aimlessly and open chests and enjoy yourself without having to be seriously competitive. It also helps that Fortnite is a free to play service.
We can expect review bombing on Steam.
Like I said on the other site: One popular game I am not a big fan of buying the another popular game that I am not a fan of.
I do not expect this to change my mind. lol
Although as @Joeynator3000 said, at least it's not EA.
If EA bought Fortnite and Rocket league, I think they would actually grow as arrogant and conceded as Disney or even Comcast.
so that means all their games will be exclusive to the Epic Store now (at least on P.C)
@R_Champ Make no illusions, they all just want to make money...no difference btwn Sony/MS/Nintendo or Epic. It's a tough industry.
Rocket League on Steam will continue to be supported by Psyonix with updates, but it will eventually stop being sold on there.
The backlash Psyonix has been recieving so far is quite a thing to see. And to be honest, I'm not supprised, especially as people have mentioned that the Epic store has far less features and contains spyware.
For themost part, I don't think the majority will care about the take over, but for the minority it's a huge deal, and I think that with Epic's record, it's hardly suprising that people are mad about it.
Oh dear. Given their history with the treatment of their own employees, I doubt they'll treat the team with too much care.
Good, now they can upgrade the Unreal Engine from 3 to 4.
Maybe even a Fortnite vehicle soccer.
Well, hopefully they won't be charging $20 for cosmetic upgrades a la Fortnite.
Its gonna be slow, but prepare to see the friendly community stuff start disappearing, and start sounding more corporate
Like others are mentionning, I usually welcome competition when it actually brings over something good (improvements) for the customers, and allow them to pick what they prefer. For instance, I have no issue with the likes of GOG, or even to a certain extent, Uplay (aside from it being bad as a stand-alone software) as it's relative non-intrusive and play nice with other platforms.
But this isn't such a case. It's actually a new platform that (currently) is inferior in every way, asking customers to jump through yet another set of hoops on top of the ones they already have to deal with, using EPIC's money to buy exclusives and studios to incite people to come to their platform. It's not proposing a better alternative to lure in players (which would be good), Epic is instead paying to "force" people into their system if they want to play the content.
I anticipate the Steam version to not receive support anymore eventually, and I'm pretty sure any new title from Psyonix will be an Epic Store exclusive too. This is NOT "only positive" answers. In fact, it's simple marketing drivel written to try to hide the fact that the "only positive" thing about it is for EPIC, and NOT for the players or the community.
EPIC is not trying to launch a competing store or platform like the GOG and Uplay of this world. EPIC is doing an EA. There's nothing about it "for the players". The only people having anything to gain from this are EPIC's shareholders.
I have a really bad feeling about this. Sure, Epic has made some cool stuff in the past. Fortnite can still be fun every once in a while, and I heard some of their other games are pretty good. However, they are extremley coperate, and don't listen to fans most of the time. They seem like they aren't in touch with their community, and I doubt that will get better. This just seems like a really bad omen for the entirety of the Rocket League community. I have the game, I just don't play it anymore, but I still wish best of luck to the people who still do.
All the lootboxes.
Epic isn't a gaming company it's a children's gambling company.
I really hope its not true that they are pulling it from steam
Looks like another developer lost.
@TheDragonDAFan OMG I didn't know that! Wow, that explains so, so much! That's.....very bad news.....
I remember when Epic was one of the good guys.....it's so weird how they turned out. That has to explain a chunk of it. Nothing that comes out of Tencent is good for humanity.
@Yorumi At this point I don't know why we don't officially just become a Chinese territory and change our postal codes to reflect it. I mean we're a wholly owned subsidiary regardless. We're just lying to ourselves otherwise.
@Yorumi While I expect the worst from Epic right now.
I still think we need to see them do something bad with Rocket League before we start complaining.
I do not think they will take away copies from players that already got the game.
They will probably just keep new skins as Epic store only.
I will only complain about this if the force the game only to launch through the Epic platform, that will be the worse they can do.
@Yorumi And it's made worse that they're effectively the only serious engine on the market for high end games. I have no idea what happend to id or how they lost market dominance so horrendously badly. UE was ALWAYS overwhelmingly inferior with terrible performance against id's engines until the wayward Doom 3 gutted id.
It actually makes me glad EA is so into Frostbite.....yay EA, the heroes of gaming! (gagging sounds)
@Yorumi Not many studios write their own engines....honestly it's pretty stupid to waste resources reinventing the wheel in general now that engines are so complicated compered to the good old days. The problem is it's apparently not that profitable to sell engines, either since even the market leader made most of their money on their lucky-strike free game than selling their engine.
If Bethesda were smart they'd smell blood in the water and capitalize with id. But they're Bethesda, so they're not too bright.
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