As an infestation of bots has wormed its way into the upper echelon of the game, Rocket League has been fighting a plague for months. Vatira is calling for a solution.
With AI software that calculates the ball path and the player’s most likely movements, the bots have perfected dribbling and flick mechanics and have taken their skills airborne with flawlessly executed flip resets.
Because of how advanced these bots now are, the majority of the hacked accounts are populating Rocket League’s bottlenecked elite ranks. But while it may only affect one percent of players in Grand Champion and SSL lobbies, players in this category are the same we see on the RLCS stage, leaving the best talents in the wonderful esport to be exasperated.
Now, after over a year of battling these bots, the modern-era icon Axel “Vatira” Touret has taken to social media to start a rally cry, with a wealth of the game’s top players joining in on the action, in hopes of pushing through the Anti-Cheat software update.
‘RLNEEDCHANGES’ trends as Vatira calls on Epic Games to save Rocket League
With Rocket League’s bots being so rife, a large majority of players have been dissuaded from actually playing the game. Instead, those grinders looking to improve muscle memory in Ranked play have been forced offline and held back to just pro scrims and 6-mans.
This boycott of Ranked play is now dropping the skill ceiling, according to Vatira, who took to social media to call for ‘change’ and demanded that the community stand against the developers to avoid facing the same damning fate as Rocket Racing.
“The game’s situation is dire. What keeps Rocket League alive is esports, thanks to its intensity, its ease of understanding, but above all, the incredible individual skill level of all the professional players,” he said.
Image Credit: BLAST / Michal Konkol
“You know where I’m going with this: bots and DDoS. We’ve had to create Discord servers just to try to play competitively, but it’s not a miracle solution. It’s complicated to manage, not easy to access, and obviously, we can’t gather players from all over the world.
“The problem is that the overall player skill level is declining, and our playtime is being cut in half or even by three. Epic Games, do something right now.”
Rocket League prides itself on being one of the games with the highest skill ceilings, too, and any factors bringing that down only harm the product.
The hashtag “RLNEEDCHANGES” has now erupted on social media, with pros, creators, and fans all voicing their frustrations.
In one example, Twisted Minds creator “Crespor” revealed conversations in the pro Discord server that showed Epic Games staff reviewing clips and issuing bans against these accounts. But both members of the team were recently impacted by the 1,000-person layoff at the company, leaving the Rocket League players without spokespersons who took active action.
Epic Games responds with promise of releasing action ‘ASAP’
With Easy Anti-Cheat being announced for an April release, but few updates since, Epic Games Senior Product Manager and Psyonix legend Murty “Schiest” Shah responded directly to Vatira.
“Confirming I’ve seen this and that it’s top of mind for us,” he said.
“We’re actively working to get more anti-botting measures in ASAP, alongside the upcoming release of Easy Anti-Cheat, to make sure you guys can play without any disruptions.
“We absolutely cannot have bots impacting your practice for the RLCS.”
Image Credit: Epic Games
Shah also revealed that more staff are being added to the pro Discord server to help address the manual reports, too.
But the stance remains clear: Rocket League’s upper echelon will have to grin and bear the bots until the April update drops.
Rocket League players have started similar campaigns in the past. Just five months back, the “Rocket League is Dead” strapline was trending on social media, which soon resulted in Epic Games making a statement of intent to combat the bots.
Yet here we are, and as we enter April, Epic faces a final race to push through its Anti-Cheat update before the player base suffers irreversible damage.
