Epic Games acquires Rocket League Dev Psyonix, Rocket League to become Epic Store Exclusive

Epic Games has announced the acquisition of San Diego-based Rocket League developer Psyonix.

Fortnite developer Epic Games has announced that the North Carolina-based studio has acquired Rocket League-developer Psyonix. A blog post from Psyonix revealed the news today along with a short FAQ.

The blog post states in no uncertain terms that Rocket League will be available on the Epic Store “in the long-term,” likely indicating its removal from the Steam platform. Other outlets are reporting that Rocket League will remain playable on Steam for the foreseeable future. As of now, players can still purchase Rocket League on the Steam storefront.

Big news! We are extremely excited to announce that we are joining the @EpicGames family! Read more in our blog here: https://t.co/mlbsrKJ0b2 pic.twitter.com/fZYMpsBtt6

— Rocket League (@RocketLeague) May 1, 2019

Epic's Aggressive Strategy

While this is good news for Steam players of the ever-popular Rocket League, acquiring developers is a new step in an aggressive strategy to attract exclusives to the nascent Epic Games Store.

Epic Games has taken fire from fans as of late following an increase in the exclusives that Epic has brought to its Steam competitor, the Epic Games Store. PC gamers were upset when Epic snatched Metro: Exodus away from Steam after many had already pre-purchased the game from Valve's platform. While Epic eventually relented and honored Steam pre-orders, the damage had already been done.

Steam, for their part, posted this message on the Metro:Exodus store page:

Notice: Sales of Metro Exodus have been discontinued on Steam due to a publisher decision to make the game exclusive to another PC store.

The developer and publisher have assured us that all prior sales of the game on Steam will be fulfilled on Steam, and Steam owners will be able to access the game and any future updates or DLC through Steam.

We think the decision to remove the game is unfair to Steam customers, especially after a long pre-sale period. We apologize to Steam customers that were expecting it to be available for sale through the February 15th release date, but we were only recently informed of the decision and given limited time to let everyone know.

Epic has also announced that it’s newly-revealed Borderlands 3 will be a six-month Epic Store exclusive.