Rocket League Moving Away From In-Game Crates
It looks like Epic’s influence over recently purchased Rocket League developer Psyonix has already begun to have an impact as Rocket League crates are changing forever.
The former-indie developer announced today that the game will be moving away from the randomized loot box system it currently uses towards a rotating shop model.
The move follows Epic’s recent move to change the Fortnite Save the World, the PVE mode for Fortnite, store to follow the same model the Battle Royale mode utilizes, allowing players to directly purchase items from a daily-rotating list.
Fan reaction to the move has been mostly positive, with many excited about not having to spend tens to hundreds of dollars trying to roll their favorite skin or accessory.
Others, however, have expressed concern over the value of their current items. Many of these players have held onto harder to roll skins and accessories for a while, hoping to turn a nice profit on the Steam marketplace.
Allowing players to directly purchase items as they become available in the shop would cause this resale market to likely collapse as the rarer items become significantly less valuable monetarily as they appear in the shop rotation.
China Rising Causes Fall of Rocket League Crates
The move comes as little surprise following Psyonix’s acquisition by Epic, which has been working hard to get its games into the Chinese market.
China has some of the strictest anti-loot box laws in the world, requiring developers to publish exact percentage chances of getting specific items from boxes and forcing developers to increase the odds of getting rarer items the longer they go without getting them.
Moving away from the current Rocket League crates system makes it easier for Epic to push their games into the market and not have to spend extra time creating and publishing RNG algorithms.
China also requires developers to limit the number of crates they can open in a day, leading to lower sales than a regular item shop, so moving to this traditional style of in-game purchases should also boost Epic sales in the region upon arrival.
How often items will rotate into the shop and how many items will be available at any given time remains unclear, but we’ll keep you updated as more information on the Rocket League crates change comes to light in the coming weeks.
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