Rocket League, the incredibly popular car-focused football game, is to receive microtransactions in the form of unlockable crates in a forthcoming update. This announcement comes around after a Redditor delved into the files of the game and found the assets; Psyonix were originally planning to make the announcement closer to the Rocket League Championship Series finals next month.
In the Reddit thread, Psyonix VP Jeremy Dunham had this to say:
“Those assets are, indeed, early pieces of an upcoming system we plan on implementing to fund our esports prize pools and events. We plan on officially announcing it next month at (or near) the RLCS Live Finals since it directly relates to that event and other events like it, but since this image came out before our official word, we wanted to clarify some things for you:
- Crates will contain cosmetic content only. We have a strict “Don’t Sell Advantage” policy for Rocket League, and we’re sticking with that.
- There will be no Steam Marketplace integration with crates. We are definitely aware of the problems related to third-party gambling in other games and we are not interested in taking that approach.
- Players who don’t want to interact with this system can hide it entirely with a single checkbox. Also of note, this won’t affect or impact our current item-drop system in any way.
- We also want to reassure you guys that we are sticking with our approach to keep introducing free new Arenas, Modes, and Items, along with the occasional paid DLC just like we always have.
Hope this helps shed some light on what we have planned. It’s actually a pretty cool system that we’ll be happy to share detail about next month.”
Unlockable crates are becoming commonplace more and more in multiplayer games, with a lot of systems receiving understandable criticism. However with Psyonix’s pledge to make them cosmetic only, there isn’t as much room for complaint. Especially since the money made off them is going toward Rocket League eSports events. If there’s a way to introduce microtransactions as positively as possible, Psyonix may be able to pull it off.