Tim Sweeney’s company has dealt one of the strongest blows to Valve. She acquired the authors of the Rocket League game. The latter is one of the most popular projects on Steam.
Rocket League
Yesterday, May 1, Epic Games announced the acquisition of the previously independent Psyonix studio, which has 132 employees.
The studio became famous for the multiplayer blockbuster Rocket League (audience on all platforms — 57 million).
The deal will be completed in May-June of this year. After that, although the game will be supported on Steam, but it will be possible to purchase it only in the Epic Games Store *
* (NEW INFORMATION) Later, in a comment for USgamer, representatives of Epic Games stated that they were not going to stop selling the game on Steam. However, the wording itself raises questions. The company stated that “(…) did not announce that it will stop selling on Steam,” as well as “Rocket League will remain available for new purchases on Steam, and further plans for the development of the game will be announced later.”
The purchase of Psyonix deals a powerful blow to Valve. Rocket League, focused on team multiplayer, in which users play football with futuristic cars, has been one of the most popular games on Steam for the past four years.
Rocket League has been in the Top 15 most played Steam projects since 2015, according to GitHyp. Also, the Psyonix project, according to Valve itself, is one of its highest-grossing games.
“We have worked closely with Epic since the early days of Unreal Tournament. And we survived, having gone through difficult times, remained partners. So joining forces makes sense,” says Dave Hagewood, founder and director of Psyonix, commenting on the deal.
The loss of such a project, if the game does disappear from the site, will be no less significant for Steam than the still unofficial, but in fact Ubisoft’s refusal to release its new products here in the first year of sales (Division 2, Anno 1800).
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