Epic Games has announced the purchase of Psyonix, Developers of the game Rocket League. Epic Games will remove Rocket League from the Steam game service.
This move is the latest in a campaign by Epic to buy up PC exclusivity rights to many games in an attempt to damage Steam‘s share in the market. Last Week Epic CEO Tim Sweeny made a series of posts on Twitter making the claim that if Steam agrees to renegotiate their revenue sharing terms with developers and publishers Epic Games would stop buying PC exclusivity to games:
If Steam committed to a permanent 88% revenue share for all developers and publishers without major strings attached, Epic would hastily organize a retreat from exclusives (while honoring our partner commitments) and consider putting our own games on Steam.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) April 25, 2019
The Epic Games Store has seen a lot of controversy since its fall 2018 launch. The store platform is bare-bones missing many of the industry standard features when compared to Steam, and the service doesn’t allow users to review games. This apparent lack of care on the consumer end has led many to the conclusion that Epic Games is anti-consumer and predatory in its practices.
This seems to be backed up by the fact that the company is not only buying exclusivity to upcoming games, but buying games that are already released with the intention of removing them from the Steam platform.
The Official Rocket League Twitter has made a statement that the game will continue to function and receive support for people that have previously purchased the game on Steam.
Hi all! 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!
— Rocket League (@RocketLeague) May 1, 2019
This statement reflects the announcement from Epic Games which confirmed that Rocket League will be available on the Steam store until later this year when it is moved to the Epic Games Store. After which it will no longer be available to download on Steam, support for the Users that have already downloaded the game through Steam will continue for an undisclosed period after that.
