Epic Games has spent the past few months attempting to create a storefront, ensuring exclusives for it, and buying out developers to create games under their label. The latest acquisition Epic has made is the just-announced purchase of Psyonix, the studio behind the massively popular Rocket League. As a result of the buyout, Psyonix will be bringing Rocket League to the Epic Games store in late 2019. Once that has occurred, it will be entirely removed from sale on Steam, though if you already own the game on Valve's platform, nothing will change. According to Psyonix, the core game will not change, and they hope to find a new audience through Epic's launcher. The cost of the sale was not disclosed.

Source

UPDATE:

After the initial fallout of review bombing and anger from the game's fanbase on Steam, Psionix has edited in a statement on their news post. They've clarified that Rocket League "is and remains available on Steam", and that those on both platforms will be able to look forward to continued support and updates. However, the wording remains unclear if the game will definitively be pulled from Steam one day in the future, only that, for the time being, it will remain on the storefront.

Editor’s Note: We wanted to clarify something for you after today’s news: Rocket League is and remains available on Steam. Anyone who owns Rocket League through Steam can still play it and can look forward to continued support. Thanks!

 

[Jayro]

What a fucking dumpster fire they started for themselves.

 

[StrayGuitarist]

I completely refused to download their client or buy anything they got their dirty hands on in the first place, but this, combined with their shitty launcher is enough for me to completely boycott the company as a whole.

Never once did anything with them, now I most certainly never will.

 

[Katasylator]

I don't get the hate. Yeah, an all-in-one launcher would be cool, but this would cause a monopoly, that's why steam has these high fees - because there was no alternative. But with the Epic Store rising, it changed. For the players.

 

[Shadowfied]

The Epic Store is gonna crash and burn. Even though consumers are ok getting fucked over really hard, there is a limit. This fiasco is gonna backfire hard.

The review bombing of Rocket League makes me extremely happy, it's rare to see consumers standing up for themselves.

 

[Deleted User]

Regardless, I recommend grabbing the game on Steam while it's still there. It's an absolute blast, and I think it's a game that a lot of tempers would enjoy playing in groups together.

I will if Valve pays up.

 

[Godofcheese]

I don't get the hate. Yeah, an all-in-one launcher would be cool, but this would cause a monopoly, that's why steam has these high fees - because there was no alternative. But with the Epic Store rising, it changed. For the players.

30% is an industry standard.
Even consoles takes the same cut.

Epic can't take the same cut and they know it because they don't have the same features as the rivals.

 

[osaka35]

30% is an industry standard.
Even consoles takes the same cut.

Epic can't take the same cut and they know it because they don't have the same features as the rivals.

a standard/tradition doesn't equate to fair or reasonable, but I honestly don't know what the arguments are for reasonable.

but regardless, Epic can shove it.

 

[Deleted User]

I think Epic should be focusing on making their platform better for the gamers before focusing on developers, make it so the people who go over to buy an exclusive, come back and tell everyone how awesome it is over there. Instead there is a lot of controversy.

 

[Godofcheese]

a standard/tradition doesn't equate to fair or reasonable, but I honestly don't know what the arguments are for reasonable.

but regardless, Epic can shove it.

Sure
A dev might see it as unfair that they take so much
But at the same time, me, an ordinary consumer, sees it as fair because I get a good service and good features that I can use.
Devs generally don't care about us.

Valve has to do something tho to gain some good cred.
Because they have been rather silent :/

Maybe they are plotting something.... Half life 3?!



....haha...

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

Anything to spite Steam is a great thing.

Valve are a shitty company and I for one am glad a company has finally stood up to chip away at Steams monopoly stranglehold.

Now if only we could get a serious YouTube competitor too

 

[Taleweaver]

Okay...eight pages, and most of it is nothing but schoolyard banter. I'm saddened, but not really surprised (I know my tempers).

I'm also a bit annoyed by the fact that most just hate the business move because they fear that every developer will quit developing for steam and they will be forced to use an inferior client. At least the linux users have decent ground for this fear (rocket league runs cross-platform. Epic's store is only available in windows. Ergo...if rocket league disappears from steam, it'll become out of reach for them). Especially since valve is shaking up the industry with protondb, literally bringing thousands of (windows only) steam games to linux.


...but while I am among that group, I see some positive on this as well. A bit selfish, perhaps, but let's not pretend that your posts aren't clouded by your ego(1).

What that is? I'll get to that...

Interesting - Epic and Psyonix go way back, as Psyonix worked on the vehicle physics for Unreal Tournament 2004 and Rocket League, or rather its predecessor Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle Cars, started life as a UT2004 mod - and of course Rocket League is made in the Unreal Engine. So it's kind of a natural partnership - I'm a bit surprised that Rocket League wasn't developed with Epic in the first place, but I guess they were busy with Gears of War for Microsoft for quite a while there - it's just unfortunate that this is the next step in their aggressive approach to pursuing Epic Store exclusives. After four years on Steam there's no reason to stop selling the game there.

Thanks for that post. I knew Psyonix rang a bell with me, and not just for rocket league. I did some digging as well, and it's even better than that: Psyonix basically made UT2004's widely popular Onslaugt mode (link to an interview of that time(2) ). I had totally forgotten that.

And that brings me to the good news I mentioned earlier: UT2004's onslaught mode was WAAAAAAAAY better than UT3's warfare mode. The vehicles were more fun, the balance was better and the game was more elegant. I know that the next UT installment hung kind of 'in limbo' ever since fortnite took over, but this acquisition honestly makes a lot of sense (that new pre-alpha UT is still completely without vehicles). More so: they should have bought them years ago.

So am I sad that I won't be able to play rocket league anymore? Not at all (heck...I have already bought that game long ago). I'm somewhat worried that this'll be a detriment to linux gaming(3), but the potential for what psyonix can add to Epic easily counterweights that.



(1) small hint: if you cared about rocket league, you would've bought it already...years ago. So I'm not impressed by your ability to write "they can suck a dong" on an internet forum
(2): purely coincidental: the interviewer was a close gaming buddy of mine back in the glory of UT2004 days.
(3): in a rather ironical move: one of the first projects after migrating to linux was to get UT2004 to work on it. It does...and I don't mean through proton (that works as well, but unless the later versions improved it, then there's a - albeit more complex - way to get it working more smoothly).

 

[Deleted User]

Anything to spite Steam is a great thing.

Valve are a shitty company and I for one am glad a company has finally stood up to chip away at Steams monopoly stranglehold.

Now if only we could get a serious YouTube competitor too

They're worse than Steam though. And this is coming from someone who is boycotting Steam.

There's decent competitors, they just lack the numbers content creators are looking for and the content creators to attract numbers.

 

[bootmonster]

a standard/tradition doesn't equate to fair or reasonable, but I honestly don't know what the arguments are for reasonable.

but regardless, Epic can shove it.

30% is actually reasonable for a number of reasons.

You are on a easy to use platform with millions of users. You get community features, steam link compatibility for in home streaming. Small studios can publish games and get onto a platform without need for up front manufacturing costs that would have been required before a digital platform was available.

Bricks and mortar retailers take more than 50% of retail cost for video games, so 30% is reasonable I would say.

 

[Xzi]

They're worse than Steam though. And this is coming from someone who is boycotting Steam.

Yeah, even those people that dislike Valve for whatever reason have to admit that EGS is not in the same league as Steam. As it is now, it's barely good enough to be considered competition to Origin, UPlay, BNet and the rest of the 'B squad.'

 

[Pipistrele]

I’m waiting for that special thread titled: Epic Games goes BANKRUPT

They did a crapton of good games though, as well as some useful multiplatform engines behind many of our favorites. More regulations and ethical behavoir yeah, but I don't think gaming industry would benefit from Epic Games closing its doors, so this kind of stuff strikes me as overreaction.

 

[DarkKaine]

And all of this is possible because they released one game that was a major hit. There's probably more people playing fortshite than all of steam combined at the moment. Fortshite has 250 million retards playing and counting while steam hit 1b accounts some time ago and is much older than their service. It's a legitimate threat to steam at this point especially once their service improves. I'm just waiting on the next shitty battle royale to steal their thunder. The avarage fortnite player has no brand attachment to begin with.

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords

 

[Godofcheese]

Yeah, even those people that dislike Valve for whatever reason have to admit that EGS is not in the same league as Steam. As it is now, it's barely good enough to be considered competition to Origin, UPlay, BNet and the rest of the 'B squad.'

They are in the C squad
If you know what I mean

 

[Pipistrele]

And all of this is possible because they released one game that was a major hit. There's probably more people playing fortshite than all of steam combined at the moment. Fortshite has 250 million retards playing and counting while steam hit 1b accounts some time ago and is much older than their service. It's a legitimate threat to steam at this point especially once their service improves. I'm just waiting on the next shitty battle royale to steal their thunder. The avarage fortnite player has no brand attachment to begin with.

Saying a single popular game can kill a whole marketplace is a bit of a stretch though - as you mentioned yourself, average Fortnite population is hardly the target audience for either Epic Store or Steam to begin with (they just run Fortnite on ES because that's how you launch the thing; they don't really care about buying other stuff). Besides, before Fortnite there was Minecraft, and it didn't kill steam despite its immense userbase. Epic Store is a threat to Steam, but for sure not because of Fortnite.

 

[Pipistrele]

The Epic Store is gonna crash and burn. Even though consumers are ok getting fucked over really hard, there is a limit. This fiasco is gonna backfire hard.

The review bombing of Rocket League makes me extremely happy, it's rare to see consumers standing up for themselves.

A perfectly good game with a lot of effort and love behind it getting shitted on by aggressive playerbase for deciding to switch a marketplace for a better paycheck. Yaaaaaaay.....