in December. For someone like me, the news comes as a mild disappointment—I got my favorite set of wheels in a trade with a friend, but I haven't used the feature in years—but for Berlin-based designer, a popular website that's mainly used to coordinate trades between Rocket League players, and which makes money from banner ads and a premium subscription option. The site has been his sole source of income for five years now, and employs two others.
"That's the thing I will definitely never do again: build a product that's based on the decisions of another company," says Vicegold."Because then stuff like this happens, right? Which is sad, because I think there's such a cool opportunity for so many people to build apps and websites around all these popular games like Fortnite and Rocket League.
Like Vicegold, I can only speculate about why Epic is cutting Rocket League trading. Removing the feature presumably dumps some customer support load, andlike it when people make products based on their products, just so long as it's on their terms—like Valve selling user-created cosmetics on the Steam Marketplace, and Epic sharing revenue with Fortnite island creators under its Creator Economy 2.0 terms. Informal business relationships are out, formal ones are in.