Rocket League Have Just Killed Their Own Game 

The greed of a multi-billion dollar company never ceases to amaze me.

Everything is just going downhill man… I don’t know what to expect next

This definitely kills a huge part of the game for me. I think I’ve reached my skill ceiling (at least before I have to start seriously practicing and putting hours in) at Champ, but I loved trading. Being able to have virtually nothing then trading up to have certain items like black tunicas and black veloces was amazing. I started playing the day the game became free to play, but this just kills it. I haven’t even played that long, and I don’t understand how certain people have been playing for 5+ years now. I like how there’s legitimate problems people have with the game, and they decide to remove something good. It almost reminds me of how every so often RU-vid does a horrible update no one asked for.

Next on the chopping block will be Bakkes Mod as that is nonstandard too.

I had a strong feeling that Epic Games would kill Rocket League after it went F2P, but I didn’t think they’d actually do it…

Very frustrating. I wonder what we can do as a community to get them to reverse the decision. Anyone got ideas?

I was trying to get a friend into RL and it was so nice being able to stoke him out with cool wheels and decals right from the jump. Like he was bad, but at least I could offer him something entertaining and help get him looking right. Even though that is about all the trading I’ve done, it’s still something I find value in. Can’t believe they would take that away.

The stupid part is, because it's about Epic's policies which also applies to other Epic games, this update is not going to be reverted. If Psyonix made this decision, they would be small enough to have to listen to the community. I have a suspicion that with all the content that Epic keeps pushing Psyonix to implement, Psyonix simply hasn't had the time to work on the actual game. When they aren't working on all the rocket pass items, it's just been corporate deals and collaborations between Epic and F1, Nascar, Car manufacturers, and pop culture games, movies, artists, and TV shows. A mass boycott of the game might not make Epic revert this update, but it could at least push Epic to sell Psyonix and their assets to another major company that actually knows what their doing. That, I think, would be the best most likely outcome.

Don’t buy any more credits from rocket league till they come to their senses

Petition to boycott rocket league

"I give this game a year or two" I think that's generous

When they realize their horrible item shop items aren't making them money.....Next they're going to throw alpha items in the shop, (not really) but it seems like that's the route they are taking. All they want is money, and it's disappointing.

"We killed your game, happy holidays!"

Two of my favorite games (Clash Royale and, obviously, Rocket League) are getting closer and closer to “dying” due to a lack of engagement/interaction with the community and terrible new features/gameplay decisions (more so cr, but rl as well). It just seems as though the devs don’t listen to their communities AT ALL and it’s heartbreaking and so extremely frustrating. I don’t understand how it can be so hard to just simply inform the community about development choices and ask for feedback, and then implement a general, realistic idea of what the community is asking for. Like seriously? I completely understand that the devs are human, and can only do so much, and I also understand that there is a layer of secrecy and privacy that the company has to maintain that gives the community something to look forward to. But when all they do is say nothing while taking features away or adding/removing things no one asked for (when the community is actively asking for new content!!) it ruins our trust as a community and will inevitably kill the game.

I’ve played rl since 2016, and the only thing keeping me coming back to this damn game was the fact that I could trade and get new stuff to look cool with my homies.

It’s honestly sad seeing a game I’ve loved and played for years get destroyed like this. It’s surreal to me that they would kill their game like this just for more money it seems.

I've played since 2015 and have literally never traded with another player. The only interaction I've had with trading was a period of time where I constantly got messages from AFKers in-game saying "trade?" and then leaving when I didn't respond. This doesn't change the game for me in the slightest. None of that means I want the feature to be removed.

They made the game F2P and now are taking out trading so they can nickle and dime the mass amount of players coming in with passes, bundles, and an item shop. They saw the esports, they saw the youtubers, and said "Im going to take this game and make some money off it". Epic is a mastermind at knowing how to nickel and dime the player at every corner and exploiting your impulses. Keep in mind player best interests make up maybe 10% of the final devision in meetings. The other 90% is all about how to exploit things like your fear of missing out, your addictive tendencies, and figuring out how to increase prices year over year while spending less and less on development. Profit margins are all that matters and are baked into every decision being made. These things are not at all done for the benefit of the player. The creative devs are either pushed away or reigned in and restrained to prevent quality products. The only developers left are the ones willing to make design decisions based on Data analytics, quarterly projections, CEO ideas, and community feedback. Which leads to a mass exodus of players who actually want quality products and leaves the community to be made up of people who willingly partake in the perpetual carrot dangling. Dead, Sad, and Decaying. The progression experiences of newer content goes against the current standard that profit-companies want you to buy into. They don't want you to enjoy the game because its good, they want you to fear leaving it.

Joining with epic was supposed to be a good thing we were told and all along we were right. Here is the thing we have been dreading. Big company no communication wants more profits. Big L today boys

Haven’t felt right all day sense I read this, this is one of the few great things that separates RL some what from any other game. I’ve actually met a-lot of really cool people new Tm8s made friendships from this it’s just really a deep core part that made this game special to me and so many others and rather then fix any other thing possible that actually needed attention we get hit with this💔 🤕 “This Is Not Rocket League” This Is Mad Weird.

I’ve never really traded or cared to before (mostly cause I never get shit from drops 😭) but it makes me so frustrated knowing that it will never be an option. My friends and I over the years have shared items with each other many times and it’s a great aspect of the game and there’s 0 reason to get rid of it

this is so frustrating because what they don't realize is that this monetization model works in fortnite because that's how it's always been there. And the big part is that outside of the normal gameplay loop of just ranked and casual games, fortnite has creative, which is HUGE. In rocket league anything like creative doesn't exist, so the thing people did outside of just playing games was trading. So this just literally kills half of the gameplay loop for the game. It's so stupid. Trading is what kept people logged in even when they weren't playing, it's what kept people coming back even when they didn't feel like grinding ranked. Now that entire aspect is just gone and there is no longer anything there to keep people logged in and interested even when they're on break from the ranked grind. New players will have much less incentive to stick with the game too because the only options are "commit to grinding for a few thousand hours to get decent at the game" or "quit"

Absolute greed. They want players to buy spend credits buying cosmetics with no hope of trading stuff they aren't using.

I swear games nowadays go through a cycle of a good start, build up a player base, GET GREEDY, ruin it.

The optimistic take on this is that RL2 must be coming out soon and they're doing this to make the ability to transfer your RL1 acct to RL2 easier. I really hope that's the reason but they fact that we get very little communication from Psyonix makes that just an optimistic hope rn

Next update: Rocket League decides to remove MMR and give everyone a participant award

I've been slapped in the face twice since yesterday. I don't know much about trading. So I loaded up some credits, Got myself a trade only to find I have a 3 day hold on the credits. Said sorry to the guy and thought " hey... ill just wait, its okay... ". This morning I wake up to this GLORIOUS message... Guess I won't be getting into trading then...

I am just at a complete loss of words. Does Psyonix not know anything about their communities??? This is one of the worst decisions I've seen a game company ever make.

I feel like people in charge of these games are making bad decisions cuz they're all bored af

More concerned for RL pros and content creators than the state of the game, don't even know what they're going to do

The best thing we could do is just boycott buying credits. Let's be honest, the only reason people buy them is as a trading currency. Item shop prices are so dumb. 20 dollars for an animated decal...

Honestly I dont think theres a single person in the Rocket League community that thinks this is a good idea. What is psyonics actually thinking

Other games = Fortnite. Just read an interview with Tim Sweeney from back in April where he used very similar wording about using items across games... It was in the context of developing the metaverse via Fortnite. RL is basically just something Epic hopes they can use to gain some ground against Roblox (which seems impossible numbers wise, Roblox is so far out front)

I wasn't even a trader myself but i have a lot of friends who are. I remember the good old day where when i first started the game and i just wanted to trade for hours trying to get awesome items. I dont know if Epic have understood what they have done. Honestly i just gonna stop myself from playing the game at all until they realise they stupidity of their decision and hopefully reconsider. They game was already dead since it went f2p, they was a lack of items and updates and the only people who still made the game fun was content creators and traders. and now with traders gona i just see the game taking a dramatic turn downwards and loosing tons of popularity. I believe they're just selfish, they dont want to continue the game anymore and they want to see their community collapse.

used to give cars and decals to friends that just started playing the game. Me and my buddies also used to let each other borrow cars to try out. kinda sucks that they're doing this.

Not to mention content creators will no longer be able to do any kind of giveaway. Giving rocket league less and less advertisement

Imagine playing with your nephew and when he says "wow your car looks so good, can u have fire on it too " instead of giving him little nice items that you don't care you must tell him "sorry buddy, you have to spend $20 on the shop to get that non competitive good looking car"

I hope this is not the downfall of this game. I'm still having fun, but if we start to lose big chunck of playerbase it will have snowball effect on players left.

This adds nothing to the game, only removes a massive feature of the game. Back in the day trading was exciting and cool, from sharing around items with friends, to swapping out your good items for other good items you want. Epic says it is for their "terms and conditions" but what they mean is, the only way to get anything cool is to spend money on us. Their 'terms and conditions' are: "Give us your money you fools." Videogame companies are some of the lowest, greediest and slimiest businesses out there. Why does EVERY new game have to go this way? Overwatch, Battlefield, Halo, (COD has put out about 500 games in 3 years), CSGO (CS2), War Thunder, Fifa, every major single player game being half-baked and not ready for release, etc etc. They all just go full greed mode.

Only way I can see this resolving is they add a market place in the item shop where you can buy and sell anything anytime

Every RU-vidr I’ve watched have all said this will kill the game and it’s the worst decision ever made by a gaming company, I completely agree what the hell are they thinking… it’s like they woke up and thought I know how we can wipe one quarter of our gaming community wonder how they’ll get rid of the rest probably high credit and shop prices and no content except copy and paste events great.

The only acceptable course of action for Epic games/Psyonix to do is announce a Rocket League 2, or add a huge fundamental game mechanic to counteract this decision. So many games are doing this now, and it's sad to see a pattern here that our favourite games/content creators are starting to be forced out of our lives

Instead of making every person who trade pay a certain amount of credits to make the trade so they can "burn" credits which results in people havve to buy credits. No they just delete a big part of the game

2:52 I mean, they kinda did already do this: In Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 4 (the Chrome season), they added the Octane all across the map..

oh my god it was for rocket racing and fortnite...

What you think about that, if by „other Epic games” they wanted to said that new RL is comming in near future ? And you will be able to transer your items from this game to the new one?

I bought 500 credits a year ago and now i have stuff that is worth well over 4k credits through trading now I wont be able to make any profit! Thanks psyonix for listening and caring about ur community!!!

Remember when they decided to ban all freestylers in casual lobby's? Man i dont know tf they accually doing to this game

They really dug such a deep grave for themselves here, it would be VERY difficult for them to get out of this one. Even if they change their mind about this decision, their reputation is already ruined, and it'll be years before they will have any trust again, whatsoever.

This makes Sideswipe look better like wtf 😂

Epic has always had control of the item shop. They bought a free game to profit off of it. This was inevitable.

I will give them credit for the fact that they could’ve easily lied about why but we’re just straight up like “we want all the money”. The real question is why? It doesn’t do anything for them lol

thank you thanovic, for making a video about how this affects the community and players like myself. Many people now won't ever get the items they have dreamt of having due to this change. Thank for showing your concern for the rl community. #thanovicbestfreestyler Also rocket league and epic games need to strive for quality over quantity (quantity being amount of $$$ they make). If things stay the same, both companies will make less money. Rocket league is being bombarded with 1 star reviews already this wont help their case. They need to stop being selfish and think about the community (no matter how toxic some people are), our community consists of beautiful, and skilled people they need to reconsider why rocket league is even a game. The reason: to play with the community, have fun, play with friends, and for all ages. Trading is a core mechanic, without it rocket league is just rocket cars.

I have a thought... do you think they're trying to connect all Epic Games item shops..? Unreal Engine 5 is coming... it WOULD be a possibility. Like open Rocket League's item shops and being able to see all Epic Games store items? They might remove trading so it makes it easier to blend platforms together. Thoughts?

i barely ever trade since bakkes mod is a thing but still not too long ago i was playing on console and i know that's a big part of the community that doesn't have access to bakkes mod, also in like 2018 - 2019 i spent all of my time on this game just trading and it was hella fun the whole journey especially if you're starting from only a few items and making your way up to lots of credits. removing trading is dumb i hope the community can do something to make them bring it back

I'm so sick of Epic Games having anything to do with rocket League. All they've done is market the hell out of the game with Porsches and Hondas and low effort cosmetics. This move just feels like them tightening the noose. Bioware round two.

They could expand and do a 1s and 2s rlcs and make a ton of money lol. Intead theyre slicing the community up. Crazy

This has to be the single stupidest decision in the gaming industry to have happened in years. This is more disappointing than the OW2 stuff

Yeah I am a casual player and after they did the stupid removal of forcing the forfeit into casual I just cant play anymore. Its casual, life comes up let me leave without banning me like... I understand for ranked but for casual????? Come on..

great video, you covered all the bases.

awesome decision epic. i'm glad you thought this would work! unfortunately though, the trading community is already undermining your credit prices and they're practically worthless, so i can buy 100,000c for $0.02. in the end, we STILL have no reason to buy from epic 😆

what game should i switch to now?

Guys remember this is mostly Epic games doing, not Psyonix

One of the very few things you can do to make rl feel different is change your car/design and now you can’t use something new without spending a crazy amount of money on it (I still remember items being put in the shop for 10x their value and they still do it)

I am agree with Than. I think Devin Connors is working against RL, really, they (psyonix) want bury the game.

If they wont communicate, what if someone hacked into epic somehow to see if theyre working on something for this game besides working against keeping it alive

It's a disgrace. Just like that. It's insane and shocking how they don't fucking care about the community at all. No one hears or reads a single shit that the community says.It's frustrating. Can't fucking believe it...

Thank you for not being sponsored by AEOH or any of those sites

#boycotttheitemshop

I’m hoping it will probably be reversed once they realise that half their community is gone 😢

As someone who has played/traded in rl since 2017, my opinion is that epic games has just become another cash grab company cus their main game “Fortnite” is dieing and has been for awhile. Terrible communication by epic games for all the games they have bought or have made. It feels like epic games should just go bankrupt already and should pay psyonix for ruining their entire game at the least.

This one hurts, I have very little faith in RL anymore and I have loved this game since this start . It’s feels bad man

dont buy items from the shop. ;0

We just need to throw holy hell to really get them concerned and hopefully they reverse the decision based on the community backlash. So right now we just have to be loud. Make videos about it, write tweets, like tweets, write support tickets, etc. don’t be rude to the employees, but make yourself heard. It’s the only way

ATTENTION EVERYONE! PLEASE HELP US KEEP TRADING ALIVE IN ROCKET LEAGUE! FILE COMPLAINTS ON THE EPIC GAMES WEBSITE! SIGN PETITIONS! GET THE PROS AND THE RU-vid COMMUNITYS IN ON IT! WE MUST NOT LET EPIC KILL ROCKET LEAGUE! "COME ON JSTN KEEP IT ALIVE! THIS IS NOT ROCKET LEAGUE!!"

bro i started playing in January this year and i might just stop after this because like i dont trade a lot but i do trade with friends sometimes and i feel like as you said they are just killing the game even more but i would play more is they added heatseeker and knockout into the extra gamemodes

Man I'm really hoping that this is actually just a thing to make the transition to UE5 smoother. Like they are removing trading so that during the swap to UE5 there aren't dropped trades, but it just doesn't make sense why they wouldn't say so. The hopeful and cynical side of me says that this is just a case of controversial advertising. They don't want to spend too much money and they want to get a lot of eyes on RL through controversy, so they can then release UE5 RL in the heat of it to get back the positive opinion and hopefully come out saying that's why trades have stopped or something.

What if the "other games" is just rocket league 2? That's a very hopeful theory.

It isnt even 1 April but 5 December WTF, Thats crazy!😡😞

I know a friend in Egypt who makes their living off of rocket league trading. No jobs in his area pay him the USD and trading is his entire income. He is supporting for a younger brother and his mother by trading to pay rent and buy food. This may have put his family into poverty. If you see any reason why removing trading is a positive feel free to reply.

With this news I am officially leaving the competitive scene. I've competed at the 17-1800MMR range in the bubble scene and have coached for teams at that level since season 10. This kills the tradition of passing down the alpha items owned by the original starters of my team to the new starters.

boycott until they revert it

i have 8k+ hours on all platforms, didnt like when epic made it free cuz microtrans were gonna be added, but i never thought this would happen. them removing trading is 100% going to kill the game. people are easily going to lose 100s of thousands. it was some of the most fun ive ever had playing a game (a masterpiece at one point). such a dynamic, and limitless skill ceiling game i dont believe there is anything thats going to compare to Rocket leagues peak. The freestyling/pro scene was something else to watch evolve. much love it was a fun ride.

Seriously, this is like if it was a wonderful Sunday evening and you're baking a cake but you ran out of sugar, so you skip on over to your next door neighbour's house and ask if you could get some sugar off them. Absolutely no dramas since you have already given your neighbour sugar many times before, and they are happy to oblige. But then the owner of Costco (or wherever your neighbour bought their sugar from) shows up and literally stops you from taking the sugar. "No giving each other sugar", they say, "You only get sugar from me." And then they cut off your fucking arms so you can't give each other sugar anymore then inevitably jack the prices of sugar up.

Wow, makes me glad I never bought the Alpha items but I'm sure they'll reverse it with the community outrage. I knew Alpha boost would be worthless, one day.. or maybe those people will just sell their accounts.

Fortnite is shit now. Rocket leauge shit now. COD shit since BO1. So can we just Go out with friends and have good times ?

If items where bought/gained as trade-able, then surely that's some kind of breech of contract to change that?

I read a quote once and I think I goes like this “Nothing will disappoint you more than missed potential”. Psyonix and Epic Games, please reconsider this decision

Are they just trying to make their game worse at this point like honestly this amazes me that they do this kinda crap, I probably wouldn’t still be playing the game rn if I never found out trading and they do this 😢

If you read it closely, does it sound like they are getting ready to transition to RL 2? They are locking items down so you can transition items to the new version? Just hoping.

The thing is if you have a Black market you dont want, you are completely stuck wirh it

This was it for me. I'm not even a trader. Played religiously since 2016, bought every battle pass, this game was something different for me. But I can't support them anymore until they start listening to the community, until we start getting fresh content. Uninstalling RL from my PC actually felt like burying a friend.

Unpopular opinion but here we go...I think this COULD be a good thing. They could be doing this to get people to purchase from the item shop more which they may use that extra money to fund new ideas and other things such as UE5 or a creative mode. Yes that probably isn't the case and it's probably all greed but hey we can atheist say MAYBE they're onto something.

All trades being “final” just gives them grounds to avoid having to refund people complaining about trades. You can do all you want as “friendly” trading, but you can’t complain to Psyonix/Epic if your friend doesn’t trade you the item back.

Yesssss now we don't have to put up with people sitting there at start of game asking to trade and purposely going afk if you don't trade

I find it very funny that they announce this and not ONE person in the entire community of almost 100 million people agrees with them

The singular reason for them doing this is because this means the ONLY way to get an item you want is to buy it directly from the item shop, the fact you could trade for it with other players means its potentially costing them money in lost sales. In totally unrelated news recently 'resigned' CEO of unity john ricatello seen sniffing around Psyonix HQ....

Since the moment epic bought rocket league I knew it wasn't gonna go well. we got rubbish seasons, rubbish items and now they're removing trading. screw you epic.

Even the most basic greedy idea of "if people get the stuff they want from trading, they won't spend money, so I lose" is just SO NOT thought-through. Even if that were the case, people still need cool stuff to trade in or credits to be able to trade in the first place. Does anyone actually think CS-Skins were even nearly as hyped if trading wasn't a thing?? Not even close.

The best way to get back at Epic is to keep playing, but don’t buy credits because servers aren’t exactly cheap