Remove ads

Death of a Franchise: Unreal & Unreal Tournament

Vadrigos

Vadrigos

Location
San Francisco
I regret to announce for those retro fans among us that all Unreal games have been removed from all major digital storefronts by Epic Games. You can no longer buy them anywhere; not on the EGS, Steam, or even GOG.com. Previously existing copies have been retained, obviously, but for the rest of the world, Unreal has been essentially erased (unless you have a physical copy). Epic has provided no explanation for this, though they have announced the release of Unreal Tournament 3 as a new, F2P game titled 'UT3 X'. However, Unreal Gold, Unreal Tournament (1999), Unreal Tournament 2004, the unfinished Unreal Tournament 4, and yes, even Unreal II: The Awakening, are all gone.

Fuck Epic Games.
 
Doccer said:
What happened to cause removal?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The official explanation seems to be that they're shutting down the online services for them as they're moving to a unified online system going forward. Of course, the fact that this is taking down two primarily single-player games with it suggests they either didn't think through how it would look, or there's more to it they aren't saying.
 
LordInsane said:
The official explanation seems to be that they're shutting down the online services for them as they're moving to a unified online system going forward. Of course, the fact that this is taking down two primarily single-player games with it suggests they either didn't think through how it would look, or there's more to it they aren't saying.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

What does that even mean?
 
I mean, it seems like they probably a) don't care about how it looks and b) thought/knew that a bunch of literally 15+ year old games weren't bringing in any new money and possibly c) they wanted to encourage people to go for their new F2P microtransaction game if they wanted to do anything with Unreal (the series not the engine).

It's not, like, the best thing to ever happen or anything but it's also kind of... well, it's inevitable with the current monetisation mechanisms used by video games? GAAS is the big thing at the moment and anything that gets in the way of it is going to get axed; this is a much bigger problem than just Epic Games. (Though their exclusivity bullshit and so on is actively damaging the games market for consumers, but that's a different issue).
 
Kadmus said:
they wanted to encourage people to go for their new F2P microtransaction game if they wanted to do anything with Unreal (the series not the engine).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
There's no sign of any fancy new UE5 UT which would make this whole thing more palatable and I do think a new F2P UT that's good would make bank but I think Epic wants to basically sunset the Unreal IP despite remembering it on Twitter some months ago. I know there's a free UT3 X that's appeared on Steam but why that and not UT2004 or 99 is beyond me.
 
Last edited:
I would assume that's because UT2k4 has a deregistering CD key problem on modern OSes and they might not have enough staff that worked on UT2k4 around anymore while UT3 is at least on a more modern engine.
 
Staff Notice - you didn't fully state it, but just a reminder that we can't allow for advocacy of piracy on the forum
csjorm said:
I would assume that's because UT2k4 has a deregistering CD key problem on modern OSes and they might not have enough staff that worked on UT2k4 around anymore while UT3 is at least on a more modern engine.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I've heard nothing about this. And it still doesn't explain the UT99 removal. Regardless, if they want to make it abandonware, then let it be.

EDIT: I should also mention that given how many people came to video game development through these games, and how much free talent they essentially generated in the same fashion as the OG Doom titles, it just becomes even more baffling that Epic would want to 'sunset' this IP. I know classic arena shooters aren't the be-all genre they used to once be, and games like Quake Champions are struggling to get by, but that's still no excuse. The community, despite it's long and heavy neglect, is still relatively lively. So yeah, I just don't get it.
 
Last edited:
Vadrigos said:
I've heard nothing about this. And it still doesn't explain the UT99 removal.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Don't get me wrong, I think what Epic is doing is a fucking shitty idea, as was throwing away UT4 development before the game could get off the ground, but UT99 often needs an external wrapper to run right and I personally have to reinstall UT2k4 every time I want to play it on Win10.
 
csjorm said:
Don't get me wrong, I think what Epic is doing is a fucking shitty idea, as was throwing away UT4 development before the game could get off the ground, but UT99 often needs an external wrapper to run right and I personally have to reinstall UT2k4 every time I want to play it on Win10.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

And again: there was still an active community that could've dealt with both these problems, possibly for free if they'd been willing. But I guess we'll never know.
 
Vadrigos said:
And again: there was still an active community that could've dealt with both these problems, possibly for free if they'd been willing. But I guess we'll never know.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Trying to professionalize and immunize yourself against legal liability when sourcing "community" fixes is quite expensive because there are major employment, contract, and liability issues that can't be avoided - and more critically oftentimes community figures have little experience dealing with this sort of legal overhead, which slows things down and makes it more expensive.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
Trying to professionalize and immunize yourself against legal liability when sourcing "community" fixes is quite expensive because there are major employment, contract, and liability issues that can't be avoided - and more critically oftentimes community figures have little experience dealing with this sort of legal overhead, which slows things down and makes it more expensive.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I didn't figure in the legal aspect…I suppose that is true.

Damn, wish this could've been from tbe shareware era. Then at least some of it might've escaped.
 
Thats sad, one of my favorite things to do was utterly destroyed the npc enemy with the Leviathan gun..

"MULTIKILL!"
"ULTRAKILL!"

Ah, the memories....
 
Small bit of extra news: for those that have it, be aware that Unreal Gold still has a master server list so long as you install the 227 (I think that's it) patch. Also UT2k4 has an alternate master server host under something called OpenSpy, which I guess is an open-source version of GameSpy. There's more info on PCGamer's article about all this, in the comments.

www.pcgamer.com

Epic is delisting almost every Unreal game, but making Unreal Tournament 3 free

Epic is moving to exclusive support of its online services suite, and that means older games are gone.
www.pcgamer.com www.pcgamer.com
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top