Rocket League's Halloween event kicks off tomorrow, adding a new (free) way to open loot crates

News
By published

Play games to earn event-specific currency.

Rocket League's position on loot boxes just got a whole lot more complex. Up until now, loot crates containing cosmetic items dropped occasionally after matches, and to open them you had to buy a key with real money (or trade for one). But now that's changing, at least during special events.

The game's Halloween-themed event, Haunted Hallows, kicks off tomorrow (Monday at 5pm PDT), adding new spooky items and pumpkin-inspired loot crates. But you won't have to pay to open those crates—you can instead open them with Decryptors, a new item that you can get for free.

Decryptors will open both Halloween loot boxes and regular ones, and to obtain them you need to spend Candy Corn, a new in-game currency specific to the event. You earn Candy Corn simply by playing and finishing matches, and you can also spend it on additional event loot crates and other Halloween items. Candy Corn will expire a week after the event (which finishes on November 6), but any items you purchased with it will remain available.

So, the upshot is that for the first time, you'll be able to open loot crates simply by playing in matches. Probably quite a lot of matches (I'm guessing you're not going to get floods of Candy Corn every time a game ends), but still, it's a start. Future events will have a similar system, developer Psyonix said in the announcement post, with a different in-game currency for each one. 

The situation with trading is even more complex: you will not be able to trade any items you get from loot crates opened with a Decryptor, but you will be able to purchase the event crates with real money in the same way as you bought keys in the past. Bought crates are automatically unlocked and you can trade any of the goodies inside.

What do you think of the system?

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.