Rocket League may get competitive Snow Day and Hoops

The dream is alive. Recently, we posted about the small, passionate community playing one of Rocket League's alternate modes, Snow Day, and how its fans hope a ranked mode could attract more players. I traitorously return to the main Soccar mode now and then, but Snow Day is far and away the main attraction for me. I'd love to play it ranked, and earlier today, we learned that may actually happen.

In a Reddit post explaining some of Psyonix's update decisions, game director Corey Davis wrote that the dev team is "engaged in design discussions" about how to add "an experience equivalent to Competitive play for our existing alternate modes." That includes Snow Day, Hoops, Dropshot, and Rumble.

Alternate competitive modes—or the 'equivalent' to competitive, however that shakes out—are probably a good ways off if they happen at all, given that Psyonix is discussing, not building them at the moment. Just hearing that they're a possibility is great news, though (for me). I had just about written off the idea of ranked Snow Day in particular, given the small playerbase.

Davis also addressed the question of whether new alternate modes were in the works. Nope. Aside from the potential for ranked alternates, the bulk of Psyonix's focus is "the core Rocket League experience." 

"While new game modes are a great way to bring players into Rocket League (both new and returning) and add variety for players of all skill levels, we see the majority of players migrating back to the original mode after a short period of time," reads the post. "While this can partly be attributed to the lack of Competitive Playlists and Season Rewards attached to these modes, we still see a clear demand for a continued focus on features that benefit the core Soccar experience that brought many of you to Rocket League over the last three years (and SARPBC [Rocket League's precursor] for seven years before that)."

As for what's actually on Rocket League's roadmap: The February content update goes out tomorrow with the beginning of Season 7, and Tournament Mode is coming sometime this spring with a beta coming sooner, along with other updates detailed here.

Personally, I'm waiting for season 1. Of competitive Snow Day. Fingers crossed.

Tyler Wilde
Executive Editor

Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the '80s and '90s, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on early PCs. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, all the shooters they call "boomer shooters" now, and PS1 classic Bushido Blade (that's right: he had Bleem!). Tyler joined PC Gamer in 2011, and today he's focused on the site's news coverage. His hobbies include amateur boxing and adding to his 1,200-plus hours in Rocket League.