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, however it was met with one small silver lining: Epic leaked/introduced plans to re-release Unreal Tournament 3, without cost, “no strings connected”.
An replace on Unreal Tournament 3’s Steam web page—which was left public and accessible for months—revealed the sport would function cross-play throughout all three of the PC’s main shopfronts (Steam, Epic Games Store and GOG) and Epic mentioned wrote on the web page “No microtransactions and no strings connected. This is the fully-featured, award-winning first-person shooter you fell in love with… utterly free.”
Turns on the market was at the least one string connected, although, as a result of as identified on 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 not too long ago been eliminated. Meanwhile in case you seek for Unreal Tournament on Epic or GOG you get zero outcomes.
Asked for affirmation of the discharge’s cancellation, an Epic spokesperson informed Kotaku “we’ve nothing to share”. Man, this sucks! The server shutdowns had been unhealthy sufficient, but when this launch has been cancelled as nicely which means there can be zero Unreal Tournament video games obtainable on any of the three largest 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 sequence, and whereas its later video games didn’t have fairly have the identical influence, its earlier titles had been foundational within the growth of the multiplayer first-person shooter as we all know it at this time. To see the sequence’ legacy uncared for like this—by the corporate who initially launched it, no much less—is a big bummer to followers now having to depend on group servers and piracy to play the video games.
