The community has spoken. In the closing months of 2025, Rocket League players decided enough is enough, voicing their strong judgment and reprimanding opinions at the 2015 car soccer title, making the hashtag #RocketLeagueIsDead trend on X.
A strong sentiment started in Europe that carried over worldwide, a charge led most notably by big content creators, community personalities, and esports pros like RLCS World Champion Alexandre "Extra" Paoli.
Since late November 2025, any and all social media posts by the official game accounts were flooded with the menacing hashtag, accompanied by specific aches and complaints by the community. But what does everyone mean by dead? And what killed? Here’s a look at the last couple of years of the rocket’s crash and burn.
1. DDoS Hackers making top ranks unplayable
DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service in Rocket League has been a plague all year, all around. Basically rendering the server useless for the victim, DDoS players are constantly and blatantly violating Terms of Service while stirring the honey pot and poking the rocket bear, so to speak.
The one-sided lag, especially considering this hacking technique is mostly used in upper ranks, like where world-renowned players live, is the perfect recipe to tilt high-profile figures that then take over social media to lambast developers and publishers alike.
While there is no one solution to this problem, the Rocket League staff has taken some action towards protecting their own servers from attacks like these, but not a day goes by without hearing complaints from a friend of a friend of a friend.
2. Cosmetic gurus backstabbed by trade removal
One of the niche yet most passionate sides of the community was the trading Rocket League marketplace, where players of any rank established an in-game economy and essentially created societal norms and customs.
You could trade burnable items for as little as 10 credits per, just like people sell plastic bottles for cents on the dollar. Yours truly went months on end to garner over 7,000 credits to buy black-painted Veloce wheels I still wear to this day. All this to say, trading is awesome – was awesome.
After years under Epic Games' tutelage, Rocket League pulled the plug on exchanging items between accounts as it got in the way of – you guessed it – making money. If players could gift, buy, or sell items amongst each other, their rotating Fortnite-like item shop was rendered useless, and for a free-to-play that’s a big no-no. If you ever wonder if the community is still in a fuzz about this one, open any social media posting to find a plethora of creative ways of asking for trading back.
3. Unreal Engine 5 teased for five-plus years
If trading triggered the traders plus the million-subscriber niche channels and their communities, then this one hit like a nuke and has become the playerbase’s “before GTA 6” equivalent.
In the summer of 2021, a job posting specified for a highly-experienced developer in Unreal Engine 5 to help with, I kid you not, “Rocket League’s move into UE5”. You wouldn’t think everyone got #RocketLeagueIsDead trending for nothing, would you?
Since its 2015 release, Rocket League has surprisingly survived in Unreal Engine 3, and whilst the move did not entirely confirm a new instalment, it definitely rubbed people the wrong way when it most likely meant moving RL into Fortnite in the shape of models, cosmetics, etc. This is the biggest wire on the ticking time bomb that exploded into the angsty yet justified trend.
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What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but how many hits like these can you take is beyond me, seeing that Rocket League has been hit by wave after wave of backlash since being acquired by Epic Games.
I sincerely sometimes wonder how Psyonix’s staff does it; letting stuff like this blow over must not be easy, and while I understand the playerbase’s overall sentiment and join them because of our joint passion for the game, maybe at some point we just stop poking this dead horse with a stick and start wishfully thinking about what Rocket League 2 could look like.
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