Looks Like Epic Quietly Cancelled An Unreal Tournament Release

In December 2022—so, only some months again—Epic determined to shut a bunch of servers for previous Unreal Tournament video games. This was unhealthy information for long-suffering followers, but it surely was met with one small silver lining: Epic leaked/introduced plans to re-release Unreal Tournament 3, without cost, “no strings attached”.

An replace on Unreal Tournament 3’s Steam web page—which was left public and accessible for months—revealed the sport would characteristic cross-play throughout all three of the PC’s main shopfronts (Steam, Epic Games Store and GOG) and Epic stated wrote on the web page “No microtransactions and no strings attached. This is the fully-featured, award-winning first-person shooter you fell in love with… completely free.”

Turns on the market was not less than one string connected, although, as a result of as pointed out in this Wario64 tweet, the sport has now merely disappeared, with all mentions on Unreal Tournament 3’s Steam web page of there being a brand new, free model having lately been eliminated. Meanwhile if you happen to seek for Unreal Tournament on Epic or GOG you get zero outcomes.

Asked for affirmation of the discharge’s cancellation, an Epic spokesperson advised Kotaku “we have nothing to share”. Man, this sucks! The server shutdowns have been unhealthy sufficient, but when this launch has been cancelled as properly meaning there can be zero Unreal Tournament video games out there on any of the three greatest shopfronts on the PC. And that is the second time one thing like this has occurred, after Epic cancelled an earlier Unreal Tournament reboot in 2018.

UT was an enormous collection, and whereas its later video games didn’t have fairly have the identical impression, its earlier titles have been foundational within the growth of the multiplayer first-person shooter as we all know it right this moment. To see the collection’ legacy uncared for like this—by the corporate who initially launched it, no much less—is a large bummer to followers now having to depend on neighborhood servers and piracy to play the video games.