Epic Games has acquired the developer studio Psyonix, which is responsible for the car soccer game Rocket League. Rocket League is set to come to the Epic Games Store “later in 2019”.
Epic acquires developer: The developer studio Psyonix announced yesterday in a blog post that they will soon be “part of the Epic family”. Epic Games has acquired the developer studio and aims to complete the deal by the end of May or early July.
Rocket League is also set to be released for the Epic Games Launcher “later in 2019”. The car soccer game is currently available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, and even runs on macOS and Linux.
What does the deal mean for Steam? Epic Games has recently made headlines with exclusive deals that exclude the competing platform Steam.
For instance, Metro: Exodus is time-exclusive for the Epic Games Store until February 2020. The upcoming Borderlands 3 is also currently only available on PC through Epic for a limited time.
There were quickly concerns that Rocket League would disappear from Steam after the deal with Epic. Psyonix has addressed these concerns but remained vague:
Rocket League is and will remain available on Steam. Anyone who owns Rocket League on Steam can continue to play and can look forward to further support.
Psyonix
Users who have already purchased Rocket League on Steam can continue to play the title. Furthermore, the game is expected to continue to receive support on Valve’s platform even after Epic’s acquisition. However, it has not been definitively answered whether the game will still be available for purchase there.
Rocket League is one of the most popular multiplayer games on Steam and according to Valve, was one of the top sellers of the year on the platform in 2018. Simply removing the game from Steam would be a much bigger cut, as there is already a huge, active player base on Steam.
This is what the players say: The acquisition of Psyonix is being extensively discussed on Reddit in many subreddits. Apart from concerns about continued availability on Steam, Linux users in particular have worries. The Epic Games launcher does not support the operating system.
Moreover, there is discussion about what “further support” for Steam means. Players wonder whether this only includes bug fixes and quality-of-life changes or whether Rocket League will also continue to receive new content on Steam.
Rocket League is also among the best multiplayer games on the Switch:
