Psyonix has confirmed that unlockable crates are coming to Rocket League in a future update. The studio said in a message posted on Reddit that it had intended to reveal the change next month nearer the Rocket League Championship Series finals, but decided to put the word out early after a Redditor dug crate and key assets out of the game's files.

“Those assets are, indeed, early pieces of an upcoming system we plan on implementing to fund our esports prize pools and events,” Psyonix VP Jeremy Dunham wrote. “We plan on officially announcing it next month at (or near) the RLCS Live Finals since it directly relates to that event and other events like it, but since this image came out before our official word, we wanted to clarify some things for you.”

Those things:

Crates will contain cosmetic content only. We have a strict "Don't Sell Advantage" policy for Rocket League, and we're sticking with that.

There will be no Steam Marketplace integration with crates. We are definitely aware of the problems related to third-party gambling in other games and we are not interested in taking that approach.

Players who don't want to interact with this system can hide it entirely with a single checkbox. Also of note, this won't affect or impact our current item-drop system in any way.

“We also want to reassure you guys that we are sticking with our approach to keep introducing free new Arenas, Modes, and Items, along with the occasional paid DLC just like we always have,” he wrote.

I don't think unlockable crates are anybody's favorite thing in videogames (see Payday 2) but assuming Psyonix follows through, this seems like a good way to go about it, especially given that players will have the ability to turn it off completely if they just can't stand its corrupting presence. Supporting esports through crowdfunded prize pools, much as Valve does with sales of The International Compendium, is a worthy goal, too.

The devil is in the details, but this looks like a very reasonable approach to a big, and potentially thorny, change. The RLCS finals are scheduled for August 6-7, so details on the new crate system should be coming in fairly short order.

Thanks, PCGamesN.