Rocket League will end player-to-player trading in December, leaving fans to fear for the future of the game

Rocket League developer Psyonix is ending player-to-player trading, leaving fans questioning whether the racing game will even be worth playing. 

On October 11, Psyonix shared the announcement below that reveals the removal of player-to-player trading on December 5, 2023. Alongside this announcement, the developer shared a blog post that goes into more detail about the changes coming to Rocket League. As the post explains, this decision was made in order to "align with Epic's overall approach to game cosmetics and item shop policies." 

The post continues: "This opens up future plans for some Rocket League vehicles to come to other Epic games over time, supporting cross-game ownership." The post also answers a number of questions about the changes being implemented, including what players should do with duplicate or unwanted items, if third-party trading websites and previous trades will be affected, and more. 

Understandably, since a lot of players use the game's trading feature, Rocket League fans are less than happy to hear about these changes coming into effect. Psyonix shared the news in the game's dedicated subreddit and fans did not hesitate to share exactly how they felt about the changes in the comments of the post. "'We won't add anything meaningful but take a big part of the game away' WTF," the top comment on the post reads, "they really want this game to die, huh," another user says.  

"This also allows them to kill the second-hand credit market...which I believe is the ultimate goal here," another suggests in the replies. Others have pointed out that the Rocket League fan site, Rocket League Garage, which facilitates a lot of trades within the community, will likely be hit hard by this change: "RIP Rocket League Garage…" one user says in the comments, "Wow, just wow, I wasn’t a huge trader but when I did I knew where to go, thank you for what [Rocket League Garage] did for the community," another adds. 

The response has been mostly the same on Twitter, with one user replying to the tweet above: "You are further misaligning yourself with your own community and what they want for themselves, and killing your game in the process," the tweet continues, "Of all the things that you have done this is one of the worst decisions in the history of the game."

Fancy playing a different car game? Take a look at our best racing games list for inspiration.