'Rocket League' (Image: Psyonix)
If you have been even remotely aware of the gaming scene in the past decade, chances are you’ve heard of the name Rocket League.
Arriving in 2015, Rocket League is a high-concept game developed by Psyonix that asks: “What if you could play soccer, but with rocket-powered cars?” It was a smash hit at launch, but its player base has slowly waned over the years.
In 2020, Rocket League was acquired by Epic Games and made free-to-play. However, as servers began getting taken down by hackers, the game’s popularity continued to falter. It also didn’t help that fellow Epic Games property, Fortnite Battle Royale, came out with a new mode called “Rocket Racing,” which was very similar to Rocket League.
The story begins to take a positive turn on January 25, 2026, when Rocket League suddenly welcomes a million players.
For the cause of this sudden boost in popularity, all fingers point to a streamer named Jynxi. For the past few months, he has been playing Rocket League every day on stream until the Rocket League Championship Series 2026, which commences later this year; these streams have garnered hundreds of thousands of views. It has also been noted that the player count drops to about 200,000 when Jynxi is not live or between videos.
January 25 was no exception to Jynxi’s campaign, and Rocket League saw its uptick in player base.
This increase in attendance is expected to continue steadily for the next month, as the Boston Major of the Rocket League Championship Series takes place from February 19 to February 22, and Jynxi is set to be an active participant.
Fans think that Rocket League should use this viral moment to bring players back into the game more long-term. The game could use this time to fix the issues that previous players have been complaining about, such as getting randomly kicked out of matches, overly sensitive controls and lag problems on console. It could also finally make the jump to Unreal Engine 5 that many of its contemporaries already have.
Rocket League was once a juggernaut in the gaming realm, and if Epic Games reads the field and makes the right plays, it could be high time that Rocket League scores a goal in the hearts of fans once more.
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