Rocket League’s in-game tournament mode goes into testing February 21

Psyonix is about to make it easier for you to compete against your friends in its vehicular soccer hit Rocket League. The studio is launching its Tournaments mode into a short beta test on Steam next week. This trial begins February 21, and it runs through February 23.

Rocket League debuted in 2015, and it is now one a regular among the top 10 most played games on Steam. The competitive gameplay is a huge reason it is so popular, but running a tournament with a large number of competitors has required a third-party system like Challonge. The addition of Tournaments addresses that need and builds a platform right into Rocket League.

Tournaments will hit Rocket League across all platforms sometime in March or April, but PC players can mess around with it before the end of this month.

“The beta is purpose-built to help us test functionality and the new UI we have created for the Tournaments system,” Psyonix developer Devin Connors wrote in a blog post.

To get into the beta, you’ll need a copy of the game on Steam. You then need to follow this procedure:

1. Right-click on Rocket League in your Steam library
2. Select “Properties” from the menu
3. Click “Betas” in the tabs at the top.
4. Click on the drop-down box, and select “Tournaments Beta”

Now, you can close the menu and wait for Steam to update Rocket League to the beta fork. After the beta ends, Steam should automatically return you to the default stable build.

I’m pretty excited about Tournaments. I tried running a competition a long time ago, and it was a logistical nightmare. Sure, a big part of that was trying to herd cats game-industry professionals, but something like this would’ve helped.