Rocket League Developer Explains Why It's Ending Support for Some Platforms

Psyonix is ending its support for Rocket League on the macOS and Linux platforms within the next [...]

Psyonix is ending its support for Rocket League on the macOS and Linux platforms within the next few months, the developer announced this week. That means that most people will still be able to play the game uninterrupted, but if you're on one of those two platforms, the clock is ticking until you need to find somewhere else to play. Following the inevitable questions about why the support was ending and talks of refunds, Psyonix offered more insights into why it's no longer able to support those two platforms.

The announcement about the support ending for certain platforms was made earlier in the week in a post within the Steam Community for Rocket League. Psyonix said it was "no longer viable" to maintain support for those platforms since it's continually upgrading Rocket League with new tech. A final update for macOS and Linux in March will disable online functionality but would leave offline features intact.

To accommodate players who bought the game on one of those two platforms and wanted their money back, Psyonix said it worked out a deal with Valve to offer refunds outside of Valve's typical refund policy. The plan didn't work as intended at first as refunds were being rejected, but Psyonix said that should be resolved now and that players can successfully request a refund through Steam's support site. Instructions on how to do that can be found through Psyonix's Reddit post for anyone who thinks they should get their money back.

In the same post, Psyonix expanded on its original announcement to explain why the support was ending. Psyonix said there were numerous reasons at play with one of the main ones being the Windows version updating from 32-bit to 64-bit later in the year along with a move to DirectX 11 from DirectX 9. New content will be planned with the updates in mind which means it won't be compatible with many macOS or Linux devices.

"Unfortunately, our macOS and Linux native clients depend on our DX9 implementation for their OpenGL renderer to function," Psyonix said. "When we stop supporting DX9, those clients stop working. To keep these versions functional, we would need to invest significant additional time and resources in a replacement rendering pipeline such as Metal on macOS or Vulkan/OpenGL4 on Linux. We'd also need to invest perpetual support to ensure new content and releases work as intended on those replacement pipelines."

Psyonix added that the players on macOS and Linux systems combined amounted to less than 0.3% of the community.

A Rocket League update in March will end support for these platforms, but a precise release date has not been announced yet.

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