Yesterday was a big day for Rocket League, as the game officially made the switch to being free to play. Unfortunately, the transition wasn't completely smooth, as servers quickly began to buckle under load. 

Rocket League's switch to free to play, combined with the launch of a new competitive season, led to an influx of players new and old. This additional load on the servers caused “tournaments, Challenges and other Rocket League features” to be impacted.

Tournaments, Challenges, and other Rocket League features are impacted by this degradation. Updates to follow when online services are restored.

— Rocket League (@RocketLeague) September 23, 2020

Fortunately, Rocket League is back online now and all services and features are working again. There are a couple of other important things to note about this new change though.

As of now, Rocket League is no longer available to purchase on Steam, although anyone who already owns the game can continue to play it from their library. Moving forward, Rocket League will be made available to play via the Epic Games Store for newcomers and anyone who adds the game to their account in the next few weeks will get a $10/£10 coupon for the Epic Games Store, which isn't a bad deal for simply adding a F2P game to your account.

KitGuru Says: It will be interesting to see how much of a boost this free-to-play switch brings to Rocket League. The game was already immensely popular, so I do wonder how many interested players would have held out for this long. 

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