Rocket League is dropping non-standard arenas for Competitive Season 6

Transparent goalposts aren't the only thing coming to Rocket League in its Autumn Update. Developer Psyonix announced today that it will also be moving to Standard Arenas exclusively for both Competitive and Casual matches when Competitive Season 6 gets underway. Standard versions of the Wasteland and Starbase ARC arenas will be rolled out as part of the update, while the "classic" versions, renamed to Badlands and ARCtagon, will be restricted to Private and offline matches.

The studio listed three points that drove it to make the change:

As an esport, "we think standardization is important and necessary to provide a level playing field and foster consistent competition across all skill levels and events."
The success of the Rocket League as an esport means that the variety that non-standard maps were meant to inject into the pro scene is no longer needed or appropriate.
Non-standard arenas have been "extremely divisive," and "the alternate layouts we devised simply didn’t add enough strategically to offset the corresponding loss in predictability and muscle memory."

"While we still value the variety that non-Standard Arenas brought to the map rotation, we no longer think the benefits outweighs the downsides they bring," Psyonix wrote. "We apologize to those who will be disappointed with this change but, ultimately, we have to act in what we think are the best interests of the game and the community at large."

A release date for the Autumn Update hasn't been announced, but it's probably reasonable to expect it sometime this autumn.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.