Prominent stakeholders in Rocket League’s esports scene have launched the Rocket League Players Association (RLPA), an organisation that seeks to improve communication with developer Psyonix and advocate on behalf of talent in the scene.
The RLPA will be made up of professional Rocket League players and coaches, and will allow its members raise issues and ask questions, which it then aims to present to Psyonix.
The Rocket League Players Association was established by Jonny Davies, a Junior Talent Manager at talent agency Sixteenth, and Noah ‘Noah’ Hinder, the Rocket League coach for Moist Esports.
The RLPA will operate under an elected model. The organisation will be split into regions, with each major region electing its own local committee to whom members will raise issues.
Each regional committee will then elect a chair, and the chairs from each region will convene in an International Committee. The International Committee plans to sit monthly or bi-monthly, and produce a report which it hopes to present to Rocket League developer and publisher Psyonix, which is owned by Epic Games.
However, the RLPA has not yet consulted Psyonix about its plans, Davies told Esports Insider, who said they want to attract players and establish legitimacy first. As a result, Psyonix’s involvement in working with the organisation is not a given. Esports Insider has reached out to Psyonix for comment and will update the story if we receive a response.
The RLPA will be overseen by an operations board with four members, alongside Davies, who is Chief Executive: Moist Esports coach ‘Noah’, G2 Esports coach Matthew ‘Satthew’ Ackermann, Team Falcons coach Nicholas ‘Nick’ Marrone, and professional player Leonardo ‘Turinturo’ Wilson.
All executive board members have foregone their voting rights in the organisation and cannot stand in elections. Membership of the RLPA is currently limited to RLCS qualified players and coaches.
Jonny Davies, the co-founder and new Chief Executive of the RLPA, told Esports Insider that the idea behind the RLPA, born roughly eight months ago, was to facilitate communication between Psyonix and the playerbase. “There’s been a call for it within the community,” Davies explained.
“It made so much sense when me and Noah first started talking about it because there was a huge amount of discord on Twitter [amongst players] saying we need some support, we need someone to push the esport forward from the player point of view.”
The RLPA, Davies claimed, would create a feedback loop between the community and the developer, and allow talent to present issues, concerns and questions to Psyonix in a more succinct way than current contact methods.
Davies also explained that an organisation like the RLPA was needed because of the young average age of the Rocket League pro community and playerbase.
Many of the best Rocket League pros are under 18. The median average age of a professional Rocket League player is 21, according to Esports Charts data (by contrast, the average age in League of Legends and CS:GO is 25 and 26 respectively).
“There’s a lot of players that are really young in the scene and I think something like this bringing a bit of structure can have a really good impact,” Davies added.
