On October 10th, the developers behind Rocket League, Psyonix, announced that they would be removing Player-to-Player Trading on December 5 at 4 p.m PST. The devs also stated that the reason for this removal is to “align with Epic’s overall approach to game cosmetics and item shop policies, where items aren’t tradable, transferrable, or sellable. This opens up future plans for some Rocket League vehicles to come to other Epic games over time, supporting cross-game ownership.”

And when it comes to the status of third-party trading websites or servers, Psychonix has clearly stated that “After December 5, there will be no way to trade items with any player or between accounts. Websites or servers advertising such services are fraudulent and have no connection to Psyonix or Epic Games.”

Your past trades won’t be revoked, and you will not lose any items that you have traded before. And regarding duplicated or unwanted items, they have stated that “The Trade-In system for Core Items, Tournament Items, and Blueprints will allow players to continue trading in eligible duplicate or unwanted items to receive a random new item of higher rarity.”

Psyonix was bought by Epic Games in 2019, and the trading feature was implemented in Rocket League three years prior to this acquisition in 2016. Epic Games also recently decided to lay off around 830 employees, which is around 16% of Epic employees.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney’s email to Epic employees stated, “While Fortnite is starting to grow again, the growth is driven primarily by creator content with significant revenue sharing, and this is a lower margin business than we had when Fortnite Battle Royale took off and began funding our expansion. Success with the creator ecosystem is a great achievement, but it means a major structural change to our economics.”

So, the decision to remove the trading feature may have been something they had been considering for a long time.