[Update #2]: Rocket League is going free-to-play, while the Steam version will become unavailable to newcomers

[Update]: Rocket League has now announced that they will be ending support for macOS and Linux platforms.

Ever since the Epic Games Store launched a little while ago, Epic has been spending more and more money in order to carve themselves a piece of the PC gaming market. They've bought exclusivity rights to a whole bunch of games, both indie and AAA, offered a generally interesting game for free every two weeks, and now even acquired the Rocket League studio Psyonix.

"In the short term, nothing will change at all," reads the official announcement from Psyonix. "We’re still committed to providing Rocket League with frequent updates that have new features, new content, and new ways to play the game for as long as you’ll have us."

"In the long-term, we expect to bring Rocket League to the Epic Games store and to leverage our new relationship to grow the game in ways we couldn’t do on our own before. We believe that bringing Rocket League to new audiences with more support is a win for everybody."

While these types of acquisitions are fairly standard in the gaming world, this one is a bit of a special case as Epic doesn't exactly have a good relationship with Steam, a platform Rocket League has been tied to for quite a few years now. As such, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to hear that this announcement didn't go over well with Rocket League's community on Steam, many of which are now worried that their version is going to end up playing second fiddle to the Epic Games Store one.

Rocket League garnered quite a few negative reviews since the announcement

I would love to tell you that this is definitely not going to happen, but both Epic and Psyonix have released some really confusing statements on the matter. First they announced the Steam version would be getting pulled from the storefront, then they quickly backpedaled and stated they have no plans to remove it, and then finally settled at the fairly generic claim that "long term plans will be announced in the future". 

What exactly that means for the future of Rocket League on Steam, I'm afraid I don't know, but I can only hope that the influx of resources and support from Epic will help Psyonix make the upcoming updates and events even better. 

Once Psyonix fully announces their plans for the future I'll make sure to let you know, but until then you can read a little bit more about the buyout over at the official website.