In what can only be described as out of left field, Psyonix, which are the developers of the immensely popular Rocket League, have announced that they will be joining Epic Games as part of their family. What this really means is that the studio has been outright purchased by Epic and now all of their proprietary IP’s will be exclusive to the Epic Games store. Obviously Psyonix sees this as a positive as they state in their post that they will have even more support for their esports division. The developer states that the deal will be complete by the end of May or early June.
Recognizing the inevitable backlash, the studio followed this with a small Q&A regarding the future of Rocket League. While the biggest change will be making the game exclusive to the Epic Game store, the bigger question is will the game still be available on Steam? For now it looks like the game will remain on Steam for the rest of 2019, but don’t be surprised if we see it taken off of the storefront not too long after. Neither Psyonix or Epic have stated if this will be the case, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
Both companies have worked together for years, going all the way back to 2001 when Psyonix was first founded and helped them work on the Unreal Engine. However, Psyonix made a name for themselves in 2015 when they released Rocket League, which went onto be critically acclaimed by critics across all platforms. The series has grown exponentially to the point of having its own esports circuit, and is consistently one of the most viewed/watched games online. Epic used their long time friendship to make this deal possible, and while we don’t know all of the details, it’s more than likely that Epic went above and beyond to make this purchase.
