Rocket League fans are so upset with the game’s microtransaction pricing that they’d rather have lootboxes back

Last week, Psyonix released the Blueprint update for Rocket League. It’s a notable update in that it’s the one that completely removes blind lootboxes, in favour of a much more transparent system. The system replaces crates and keys with Credit and Blueprints in the game’s newly implement in-game shop. The change was made to move away from gambling-styled loot-boxes in favour of transparency. Players earn credits, which they can use to effectively buy the cosmetics they want. Unfortunately, the price of those cosmetics is so ludicrously high that it’s annoying the game’s loyal fanbase.

It’s become such a point of contention that many are asking for lootboxes to come back. One of the reasons for that is because the lootboxes gave players a bunch of items that could be traded in the grey market. In this new system, there are top-tier items that on their own cost $20 – whereas with the loot box system that cash would have allowed players to earn at least 20 lootboxes containing all sorts of stuff.

“The new blueprint system is a complete rip-off,” says one of the game’s Steam players, Jyv, who has over 680 hours logged in Rocket League. “The prices are nowhere near the market price before the change… You used to spend 20 keys worth for 20 items if you open crates, now you use 20 keys worth to get one item from the shop.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Pro Rocket League players too. G2’s Dillon ‘Rizzo’ Rizzo says that the update “fucking blows,”and isn’t pleased with the pricing on individual items.

I support nearly anything Psyonix tries to do but this feels low effort and not even well thought out at all. the reasoning (im guessing) for the paint is because car bodies are imports so ig they want to charge more but man this doesn't look right

— G2 Rizzo (@Rizzo_TV) December 4, 2019

Naturally, the game’s subreddit is full of complaints and memes about the egregious pricing. Says one upset redditor:

“…you guys basically killed the trading scene in one fell swoop, introduced a shop with egregiously overpriced items, removed decryptors from the free rocket pass and replaced it with nothing, introduced nothing for gameplay whatsoever.

No new modes, no fixes for a lot of problems that people have been asking to be fixed for months. This whole update was a cash grab and I believe we the community are rightfully pissed. We thought you were different, we thought “oh psyonix won’t be like that they are a good company that cares about it’s player base” we now know you just want to squeeze every last dime out of us.”

There’s even a movement of sorts amongst players to stick to the base Stocktane car with no livery as some sort of protest about the cost of the new microtransactions.

Much of the blame has been levelled at Psyonix’s new boss Epic Games, who’ve implemented a similar store for microtransactions in its unfathomably popular Fortnite – though even that game isn’t quite so overzealous with its pricing.

Last Updated: December 9, 2019