Play Rocket League on Mac 

About Rocket League on Mac

Rocked League is a free soccer sci-fi video game that used to have a macOS version for Mac but currently can’t officially be played on Mac. To play Rocket League on Mac, you’d need to try some workaround methods, like using GeForce Now or Parallels.

Rocket League was developed by Psyonix and released in 2015. It is a sequel to the 2008 PS3 Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars game, which didn’t gain too much popularity and had mixed reviews. Rocket League, on the other hand, is praised by both critics and gamers and has even gone on to become an e-sport, with professional players participating in its tournaments through Major Gaming League and ESL.

Unique Gameplay

As for the game itself, it is a single-player and multiplayer soccer game, but instead of controlling human players, you control a rocket-powered vehicle that you use to hit the football in the direction of the opposing team’s goal and score points. Unlike more conventional soccer games like FIFA and PES, in Rocket League you are given control over a single soccer player (vehicle) from a third-person perspective, and don’t have the option to switch between players. In addition, the game is played from a third-person perspective, much like a racing game, rather than from a top-down viewpoint. This gives the game a distinct action feel and makes it far more dynamic compared to conventional soccer video games.

Editors’ Choice: Play Genshin Impact on Mac

A Match of Soccer

The game overall have the same rules as real-life soccer, with a few modifications to make the game more dynamic and give it greater variety. One of the main changes is that there are speed boosters throughout the football pitch that give a short burst of speed to the player’s vehicle that allows him/her to get to the football more quickly and to hit it with greater force. Another way of using such boosters and, which is also one more change to the traditional rules of soccer, is to ram your vehicle into the vehicles of opposing players, thus destroying them. After a vehicle is destroyed, it would respawn in a couple of seconds on the respective team’s side of the pitch.

To reach the football mid-air, the player’s vehicles can perform jumps. Players can change the orientation of their vehicles while the latter are midair and also boost them to move in the direction they are facing, allowing for mid-air control and more options to hit the football while it’s not on the ground.

Regular matches last five minutes and if the two teams are tied at that point, the team that scores first is the winner.

The base game is pretty straightforward and in spite of the several mentioned changes compared to regular soccer, there isn’t too much crazy stuff happening. However, players are given the option to enable various modifiers (mutators) that change different aspects of the gameplay, such as gravity, ball bounciness, ball size, and more.

In addition, over time different game modes have been added to the base game, such as Snow Day, which is a hockey mode, Hoops, a basketball mode, and Rumble, in which players can gain access to different power-ups, such as to cause an opponent’s vehicle to become difficult to control or to temporarily freeze the ball making it unmovable.

Rocket League Modes

While the base game is indeed very fun, it is such game modifiers and modes that keep it fresh and expand the gameplay experience beyond an almost-regular game of soccer. This, in turn, is why, even if you don’t like soccer as a sport and/or aren’t interested in soccer-based video games, Rocket League could still turn out to be surprisingly enjoyable for you, as it doesn’t really feel like as soccer game as much as it feels like an action racing game with the objective of pushing a huge ball to a goal on the other end of a soccer pitch-shaped racing track. Though technically it’s still soccer, the gameplay experience is very different from FIFA, PES, and other football simulators, so it’s likely that even if you don’t particularly enjoy the latter, you may still like playing Rocket League. What’s even better is that, even if it turns out that you don’t really enjoy the game, since it is free (as of September 2020), you would have lost nothing if you had given it a try.

Unfortunately, support for Mac and Linux stopped in 2020, and you currently can’t get the full functionality of the game on your Mac. Older versions of the game can still be played on Mac systems but only in single-player, split-screen, or LAN. To get the full functionality of the game, you’d need to seek other methods.

Rocket League Set Up Methods

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Step 1. Create account for Rocket Leauge

Before playingRocket League make sure you have an Epic Games Account. This is important as you won’t be able to play the game on cloud gaming services such as Boostorid and Geforce NOW. Bellow is a link to the official websites.

Step 2. Register and Rocket League on Boosteroid

All you need to do now is register to Boosteroid. This allows you to add Rocket League to there Cloud Gaming Library. Once signed in you can seamlessly play the game from your Mac.

When Registered you will have additional access to more then 70 top rated games for free. Pricing varies depending on subscription plan.

How to play Rocket League on Mac M1?

To play Rocket League on Mac M1, we recommend installing Parallels and using it to create a Windows 10 virtual machine on your Mac. After setting up the Windows 10 virtual machine, you can use it to play Rocket League on your Mac M1.

There are other programs aside from Parallels that can be used for the same thing, but, currently, Parallels seems to be the best option for playing Windows 10 games on Mac as it has a specialized gaming mode that you can choose during installation. Below, we’ve shown how to set everything up and get the game running on your Mac M1.

• Note that Parallels is a paid program that has a 14-day free trial period. You can use the free trial to test the program and its ability to let you play Rocket League on your Mac and then decide whether it’s worth purchasing it so that you can keep using the program.

1. Open the Parallels site and click the Download Free Trial option.
   
2. Click the Download Now button and download the installation file for the program.
   
3. Open the Install Parallels Desktop.dmg you just downloaded and double-click on Install Parallels Desktop. If your system warns you that the program you are trying to start has been downloaded from the Internet and cannot be verified as safe, click Open to continue – this program is perfectly safe and won’t harm your Mac.
4. Wait for several moments as necessary data is being downloaded, then type in your admin password when required to and after that click OK.
5. You will need to wait for a bit more, and after that you must give your permission on each of the permission requests pop-ups that appear on your screen.
6. After you’ve provided the needed permissions, go to the following webpage (without closing Parallels).
7. On that page, scroll down a little and once you get to the Meet the Windows Insider Program section, click on the Register button.
   
8. Sign in with your Microsoft account or create one now and sign in with it.
9. Next, select Register Now and then, on the following page, click Flight Now/Start Flighting.
   
10. Now open this link, sign in with your Microsoft account (if you aren’t already signed in), click on the Windows Client ARM 64 Insider Preview button, and download the file on your Mac. This is a big ARM VHDX file, so downloading it will likely take quite some time.
    
11. After the download completes, return to the Parallels window (it should still be open), select Continue in it, and then find the ARM VHDX file that you just downloaded, and drag-and-drop it in the Parallels window (where it says Drag an image file here).
    
12. Select the Continue button, and select Games Only on the next page if you intend to use the Windows 10 virtual machine solely for gaming.
13. Check the Customize option on the next page and then select the Create button.
14. Before the installation starts, you will see a customization window on your screen because you checked Customize in the previous step.
    Here, we suggest allocating to the virtual machine 6 GB of RAM for Mac M1 models with 8 GB RAM or 8 or 12 GB of RAM for Mac M1 models with 16 GB of RAM for best performance. We also recommend allocating at least half of your CPU cores to the virtual machine. The goal is to squeeze out the best performance your M1 Mac can provide you with while gaming in the virtual machine, yet still keeping the computer stable when switching back to macOS.
15. Once you are done with the customization, close the custom settings window and the installation process should commence. Whenever you are asked to provide your permission for something, click OK to give your approval and continue with the installation. Soon, the Windows 10 virtual machine will be installed on your Mac and you will be able to use it for gaming.

Once the Parallels virtual machine is ready, you can start it to play Windows games from within it and then quickly switch back to macOS by simply pressing Command + Tab or by swiping with three fingers to the right or left on your trackpad.

If you want to pause Parallels so that it doesn’t use any of your Mac’s resources, switch to macOS, click the Parallels icon from the menu bar, select Actions, and click the Pause option. To unpause Parallels, you can do it from that same menu or switch to the virtual machine and click the big pause button in the center of the screen.

If you wish to quit the Parallels virtual machine, switch to it, click the Windows 10 Start Menu in the bottom-left, select Power, and then click the Shut Down button.

How to play Rocket League on Mac GeForce Now?

To play Rocket League on Mac, we recommend using the GeForce Now cloud gaming service, as it’s easy to set up and start playing. If this doesn’t work for you, another possible method to play Rocket League on Mac is through Boot Camp Assistant.

Below, we will explain how to use both methods to play the game but bear in mind that the Boot Camp Assistant method is significantly more time-consuming and also may not always give you the best end result. Still, if for some reason you cannot play the game through GeForce Now, it’s still a viable method. Of course, you can also use the Parallels method we showed above, as it should work for both Intel and M1 Macs.

Using GeForce Now to play Rocket League on Mac

Here’s how to quickly set up GeForce Now and use it to play Rocket League

1. Visit the GeForce Now site and click Play Now.
   
2. Choose the subscription plan you wish to use.
   
3. If you have a GeForce Now account, log into it. If you don’t have an account, create one now, verify your email, then return to the GeForce Now site, click on Play Now once again, and log in to the newly-created account.
4. Scroll down in the page of your account, and in the Quick Links section, select Download Apps.
   
5. Download the GeForce Now client for Mac, open the downloaded file, and install the client by dragging the GeForce Now icon to the Applications folder icon.
6. Open the GeForce Now app/client from your Applications folder, and search for Rocket League using the search bar at the top.
7. Click the Rocket League tile, then select Epic Games, select Play, and click Continue if you’ve already “bought” the game from Epic Games (see how to do this at the end of the article).
   
8. Next, choose whether you’d like to connect your Epic Games account to GeForce Now – you can select skip if you don’t want to connect the account.
9. Now you must wait for a bit as GeForce Now analyses your Internet connection. If the connection isn’t strong/fast enough, you will get a warning but will still be allowed to play if you want – simply click Continue.
10. Now you must wait in a queue for your turn if you are using the Free subscription plan. The paid subscription plan should have little to no waiting time. When your turn comes, you will be given several sign in options – choose to sign in with your Epic Games account and the game will start.
    

Installing Windows 10 on your Mac using Boot Camp Assistant to play Rocket League

Note that this method is only available for Intel-based Macs, and you cannot use it to play any game if your Mac has an M1 chip. The reason is that the Boot Camp Assistant app isn’t available on M1 Macs. For this reason, we showed the Parallels method as an alternative. If you are using an Intel-based Mac, however, you can try this method and see if it works for you.

1. Open this link to Microsoft’s site, choose the default Windows 10 variant, click Confirm, select a language, and click the next Confirm button.
   
2. Click the 64-bit Download button and download the Windows 10 ISO file (preferably on your Desktop).
   
3. Click Go in the Menu bar, click Utilities, and open the Boot Camp Assistant app.
   
4. When you open the Boot Camp Assistant, select Continue, then click Choose a Windows 10 ISO file, click Choose, navigate to the ISO file you downloaded, select it, and click on Open.
   
5. Next, by dragging the dot between the macOS and Windows partitions to the left or to the right, redistribute the storage space allocated to either partition so that the Windows one gets at least 130 GB of storage space, while also making sure to leave at least 50 GB of free storage for your macOS partition. If you don’t have the free space to spare, delete some files to free it up or, if you cannot do that, do not continue with the installation.
   
6. After allocating enough space to both partitions, click Install. The Boot Camp Assistant will need a couple of moments to prepare for the installation, after which you will be required to provide your Admin password – enter the password and click OK.
7. Your Mac will now restart, and you should see the Windows logo on your screen after that – select your language and region and click Next.
8. On the next screen, you will be asked to enter your product key. If you have a key, enter it and click Next/OK. If you don’t have a key, don’t worry – simply select the I don’t have a product key/Skip button, and you will still be allowed to proceed with the installation.
   • If you are asked to choose between Windows 10 Home or Pro editions on the next screen, choose the Home version – it has everything you may need for gaming. Select Pro only if you intend to use any of the more advanced features that come with this Edition of the OS. Click Next/OK after you choose the version you prefer.
9. Finally, select I Agree and then click on Next to begin the installation. The process will take some time, so be patient. Also, make sure to keep your Mac plugged into a power source to prevent its battery from accidentally running out of juice. If your Mac shuts down during the Windows 10 installation, this could lead to a whole lot of problems you most certainly don’t want to have to deal with.
10. After the installation finishes, your Mac will restart once More and when it does, you will be given the option to either personalize the settings of Windows or go with the default ones – we recommend taking the time to customize the settings.
11. After that, you must create a Windows 10 account by entering a surname and a password.
12. Next, you can choose to activate and personalize the settings of Cortana, the Windows 10 virtual assistant, or skip this for now – choose whatever you prefer and continue.
13. Windows 10 should now load on your Mac and you should see the Boot Camp Assistant app open on your screen. Click Next in it, then click I Accept, and select Next again. This will start the process of installing necessary Apple drivers for Windows 10. If you are asked for Admin permission, click Yes to allow the installation to continue. After everything needed is installed, select Finish to restart your Mac.
14. (Optional) For optimal experience when using Windows 10 on your Mac, we recommend that, after the computer boots back into Windows 10, you click the Start Menu (bottom-left), select Apple Software Update, see if the system finds any available updates, and install anything that gets found. As before, give your installation permission if it is required at any point and once everything is installed, click Yes when asked if you’d like to restart your Mac.
15. (Optional) We also recommend installing any available Windows 10 updates – to do that, click the Start Menu again, go to Update & Security > Windows Update. The updating process should start automatically and once it is finished, you must once again restart your Mac. With this, the installation and setting up of Windows 10 on your Mac will be completed.

Switching between partitions

If you are in Windows 10 and want to go to the macOS partition, click the small tilted/slanted square in the bottom-right and click Restart in macOS. If you don’t see the square icon, click the upwards arrow (again, bottom-right) and you will see the square in a box with other icons.

If you are in macOS and want to restart in Windows 10, go to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Startup Disk, click the Padlock, enter your password, and select Unlock. After that, select the Bootcamp Windows icon, and select Restart.

Installing and playing Rocket League

Use the instructions of this paragraph if you used Parallels or Boot Camp Assistant to get Windows 10 on your Mac. You need to perform the next instructions from within the Windows 10 partition/virtual machine.

This is the easiest part of this guide. All you need to do is go to the Epic Games webpage for the game, enter your Epic Games account (if you don’t have an account, create one now and enter it) click on Get, then accept the license agreement, tick the box to the right in the next window, and select Place Order.

Next, click Agree, and once the game is purchased, click on Download Epic Games Launcher, then open the downloaded file and perform the installation.

Once the launcher is installed, open it (if it doesn’t open automatically), log in with your Epic Games account, go to Library (on the left), and click on Rocket League.

You will be asked to choose an install location – use the preset one if you wish, or change it and select Install. Once the installation completes, use the shortcut on your Desktop to launch the game or go to the game’s installation folder and launch it from there if you’ve chosen not to create a shortcut.