Rocket League trading site founder will never 'build a product based on the decisions of another company' again after one decision from Epic puts him out of a job
Rocket League's player-to-player trading system will be turned off 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 Laurids «Vicegold» Düllmann and a few others, the announcement means losing a job.
Vicegold doesn't work at Rocket League developer Psyonix or owner Epic Games. He's one of the founders of Rocket League Garage, 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. (There are other Rocket League trading sites, too, such as RL Trades Finder and RL Exchange, the latter of which buys and sells items itself.)
Psyonix didn't explain the decision to remove player trading in much detail, and contrary to the tone of the announcement's ice cold notice that sites offering Rocket League trading services will be «fraudulent» after December 5, Vicegold and Rocket League Garage haven't had an antagonistic relationship with the developer. It's been the opposite: Vicegold told PC Gamer in a call this week that Psyonix has been supportive and communicative over the years.
«They [Psyonix] were always really nice,» said Vicegold. «They even gave me access to their API so I could have functionality like a rank tracker. Every time we had a question or something, they always talked to us. Sometimes they said, like, 'OK, please enforce our TOS,' and we always happily obliged to that.»
Vicegold's relationship with Psyonix goes back even further than Rocket League's launch: He was a player
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