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Rocket League's revamped tournament mode will match players based on rank

Rocket League is completely revamping how is tournaments work, including changes to how Ranked mode intertwines with tournaments, rules regarding entry, and rewards within tournaments. It comes as Rocket League prepares to go free-to-play, something which will likely happen on or before September 1, when the new season gets underway.


Rocket League says this restructure is aimed at allowing players to "feel the competitive energy of what it's like playing in Rocket League Esports", regardless of their rank. Once the season kicks off (should that be drives off?), tournaments will happen daily, and will allow players to climb through ranks with successive victories.


The daily tournaments are region specific, and feature teams of 3 v 3. Players can either compete as a ready built squad or can solo queue and be matched with players of similar rank and ability. There are no limits to how many tournaments any player joins, but bans are handed out for early quitters.


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Rocket League servers go down today - here's when in your timezone

Rocket League's servers are going down for "scheduled maintenance" later today, developer Psyonix has announced. The downtime begins on Wednesday, August 12 at 20:00 PT / 23:00 ET - that's 04:00 BST on Thursday, August 13, for those in the UK or Europe.


The downtime will last "up to one hour", during which access to competitive playlists will be unavailable. Psyonix did not say what, if anything, would change after the downtime.


Rocket League is going free-to-play with its next update, though we don't yet know when that will land. So far, Psyonix has only stated that it would be at some point this year, when cross-platform progression will also be introduced. In a recent blog post, the company shared more information on how that system will work, including the linking of different platform accounts and which items are shared across platforms - and which are not.


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Here's how Rocket League's cross-platform progression will work





Cross-platform play is already possible in Rocket League—a Steam player can compete against a PlayStation player, for example—but players who have multiple accounts on different platforms currently have no way to synchronize their progression and inventories. That is, someone who owns Rocket League on both Steam and on PS4 has to level up and earn items separately on each platform. That's changing, and with a little setup, the pretend cars you own on Steam will soon be the same pretend cars you own on PlayStation, Switch, Xbox, and so on. Rocket League's new cross-platform progression system will be added with its free-to-play launch on the Epic Store. When that happens sometime this summer, new players will no longer be able to get Rocket League on Steam, though existing players will still be able to play their Steam copy, and it'll get the same cross-platform features and updates as the other versions. However, while you won't have to switch to the Epic Store version of Rocket League if you want to take advantage of cross-platform progression, you will need an Epic Games account. The way it will work is pretty simple: You'll link your various Rocket League platform accounts to your Epic Games account, and then you'll select one of them as your primary Rocket League platform—your Steam account, for instance. All the other linked accounts will then gain and contribute to the primary account's inventory, competitive rank, XP level, and Rocket Pass progress. There are some exceptions: Premium DLC, Credits, Esports tokens, and a few other things won't be shared. Player-to-player trading will also be restricted so that items can only be traded on the platform they were purchased on. Those are minor limitations, though, and the functionality should be a boon to players who move between console and PC, because they won't have to fight for two or more competitive ranks, and can work on one Rocket Pass progression. (It's also part of Epic's grand strategy. Epic boss Tim Sweeney has been a vocal proponent of cross-platform functionality for years, and Epic recently made the cross-platform infrastructure it built for Fortnite free for other developers.) For people like me who only play on Steam, there's an extra incentive to link an Epic account: Do it and you'll get the "Chopper EG" wheels pictured above. They're kind of ugly, though, so I think I'll survive without them. If you play on multiple platforms and do look forward to consolidating, though, you can read more about how you'll be able to connect your accounts in this Psyonix blog post.  Psyonix still hasn't said exactly when the free-to-play update is coming, but it should happen before the summer is over.

Scrub Killa and Gregan are reunited - and their Rocket League ambitions haven't changed

About eight months ago, I sat in Team Vitality's brand new training facility in Paris' iconic Stade de France, and nattered away with Rocket League coach Mike 'Gregan' Ellis and young prodigy Kyle 'Scrub Killa' Robertson. The pair helped Vitality win a World Championship and were preparing to solidify the French organisation as the best Rocket League team in the world. Just two months later at the turn of the year, both had left.


For Gregan, there followed a long period away from the responsibility as a head coach. For Scrub Killa, instability became the theme of 2020. After his exit from Vitality, he moved to mousesports - but this opportunity was cut short due to disagreements over contracts. What came next was a lengthy spell without a team, where the Scot filled his time with streaming and the occasional tryout.


Now though, the double act are back, and part of the very first esports roster to be fielded by Guild Esports. The new UK-based team (backed by England legend David Beckham, no less) has dived straight into the intense, reimagined world of Rocket League esports and got its debut outing as an organisation in the first stage of the European division of RLCS X.


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Rocket League director says the Epic Games Store is "a great platform" for the game

Rocket League has just turned five, but the game has had quite the journey. From launching in July 2015 on PC and PlayStation 4, to being ported to Xbox the following year, the game has entertained millions of players with its addicting rocket-powered cars. Now Psyonix is preparing for its biggest update yet, in which Rocket League will be made free-to-play.


Of course, this decision has been a long time coming. Psyonix were, after all, bought out by Epic Games last year, and the development team have spoken about their desire to make it free in the past. So in order to understand why the free-to-play update is coming now and what the future might hold, we sat down with Scott Rudi and Corey Davis, the game director and co-studio head of development.


"Going free-to-play has been in the works for quite some time," Rudi tells The Loadout. "We were looking for the right time to make it happen. Things started to align when we were acquired by Epic and we made the decision that we wanted to go onto the Epic Games Store as a free-to-play game. It just fit."


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