Rocket League is finally going free-to-play this summer

By Tom Caswell July 21, 2020

Rocket League, the car-soccer multiplayer mash-up, is going free-to-play, according to an announcement Tuesday.

The change will come alongside one of the biggest updates to the game this summer, which will bring major adjustments to its Tournament and Challenge systems.

This update will also add cross-progression to the crossplay aspect of the game, meaning a player’s inventory, Rocket Pass progress, and Competitive Rank will carry across all platforms. The catch is that players’ numerous accounts will all need to be connected to and funneled through an Epic Games account.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Further distancing the game from Steam, it will no longer be available to purchase on the platform once the update kicks in, but existing players on the service will still be able to utilize that version of the title. With Epic purchasing Psyonix in 2019, this was an inevitable change.

To reward those for purchasing the game already, those players will be gifted Legacy status. This includes all the Rocket League-branded DLC, a marker that displays the year players started playing the game, an upgrade of 200 items to “Legacy” quality (whatever that means), a Golden Cosmos Boost, Dieci-Oro Wheels, and a Huntress Player Banner.

Antone who purchased the game before this announcement will get an additional Faded Cosmos Boost. All of these benefits will be gifted to players that qualify for them once the game has gone free-to-play.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

In terms of the changes that are coming to the Tournament and Challenge modes, those details will become available in the coming weeks.

Rocket League debuted as a free game for PlayStation Network members in 2015, and is a very popular sequel to a not-so-popular game Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars. Being free for a time on PSN allowed the title to gain traction. It eventually became available on numerous platforms and swelled to over 10 million sales in 2018.

Developer Psyonix had initially looked at free-to-play status for the game after seeing the sales models of Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2, which at the time were the exceptions and not the rule. While they initially chose to charge for Rocket League, the majority of multiplayer-focused games are now free and have markets for cosmetic microtransactions.

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Gaming

It’s time for the Mario Sports games to go free-to-play

Mario and his team pose in Mario Strikers: Battle League.

Every time a Mario sports game has launched in the past decade, it’s seemingly been the same story. Players get a strong core experience anchored by highly refined sports gameplay. The problem? There aren’t a lot of compelling reasons to actually play due to thin feature lists. We saw it in Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash, Mario Sports Superstars, Mario Golf: Super Rush, and now again in Mario Strikers: Battle League.

The latter is arguably the most egregious offender yet. While it features some of the most complex and nuanced Mario sports gameplay to date, it's severely lacking when it comes to game modes. Rather than including challenges and minigames to test players’ skill, there are three options: Freeplay, a small set of tournaments, and online play. All of those can be enjoyed solo, but it very much feels like a multiplayer-first experience built around its standout online “club” mode.

Gaming

Overwatch 2 is going free-to-play. Here’s why

Wrecking ball and his ball mech.

Overwatch 2 is going free-to-play this October. The upcoming competitive shooter from an embattled Activision Blizzard was expected to launch in 2023, but we learned that it was coming a bit earlier than expected and would be free during the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase on June 12. Still, this is a shocking shift for one of Blizzard's biggest franchises and one that has a lot of implications for the pace of updates and new content. Ahead of a livestream that gives more details about the free-to-play shift, Digital Trends spoke to some members of the development team, including Game Director Aaron Keller and Overwatch VP and Commerical Lead Jon Spector, to learn why exactly the Overwatch 2 team decided to embrace free-to-play.
Overwatch 2: Reveal Event | June 16
The best option
At launch on October 4, Overwatch 2 players can expect three new heroes (including a support character teased in the release date trailer), six new maps, over 30 new skins (including a mythic skin for Genji), the Push game mode, and the game's first battle pass. Barring any issues that cause the team to reschedule, the second season will begin on December 6 and introduce another new tank, a new map, and a battle pass with over 30 new skins. More heroes, maps, modes, and the PvE story campaign will start to roll out throughout 2023.
Blizzard plans to make seasons last nine weeks, with three or four new heroes added yearly. If you play games like Apex Legends or Valorant, this cadence of releases should be familiar to you. Keller and Spector claim that other successful free-to-play games aren't what caused Blizzard to make this shift. Instead, they say factors like lowering the barrier of entry for interested players and not wanting to hold on to finished content played a part in Overwatch 2 going free-to-play.

"We don't want to develop things and try to pool it together into a big box release; we'd rather just put content out when it's ready and do it as quickly as we can," Keller says. "As we kept working on some of the more innovative gameplay for the PvE side of Overwatch 2, it meant that it was going to take longer for any of our PvP features to go public. We want to release stuff as frequently as we can, but it was taking us too long to be able to get it in front of our players."
The original Overwatch has floundered since it stopped getting significant content updates in 2020 so Blizzard could focus on Overwatch 2. By releasing the sequel as a free-to-play game this year, that long wait ends -- and players won't have to worry about it happening again for a long time. The developers also stressed that Overwatch 2 would feel more like a sequel than an update when it launches, thanks to the new content and rework into 5v5 matches. Spector explains that many systems fell in place simultaneously, like cross-play, cross-progression, and the seasonal model, so it made sense to lower the barriers to entry and launch free-to-play this year.
"We are dedicated to putting out content frequently and consistently in perpetuity."

Gaming

Fall Guys is going free to play ahead of Switch, Xbox launch

fall guys free to play x tron

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, 2020's free-for-all battle royale party hit, is going free-to-play two years after its original release. The bean-filled game is also brawling its way to even more platforms, including Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and the Epic Games Store.

Fall Guys Free for All Announcement Stream