Next Gen Unreal Tournament - PC Exclusive, 100% free

Official Epic Forum Post

Gamespot Link

Epic have announced that the next Unreal Tournament game is going to be on Windows PCs, Mac, and Linux and 100%. No microtransactions, no F2P scheme, just 100% free.

More details to follow...

• PC, Mac, Linux
• No consoles announced
• 100% free
• No microtransactions
• Development has begun but no version is ready for any release
• Will have a transparent development process, community involved in every step
• Alpha build will be playable ASAP
• Some sort of Marketplace built for users to easily share/sell content (much like the Steam Workshop only people can sell their products)

Sounds much more like this is a base for modders and new devs to develop content within the Unreal 4 Engine as a way to get more people using the engine.

The idea behind this is that Epic will develop the basic content of the game and the community will continue to provide content. All of the content that Epic builds will be 100% free and users will be able to freely distribute content on the marketplace or sell it for a price. Obviously details are yet to come but there are no official "microtransactions".

Epic is banking on the community to continue pumping life into this game through maps, game modes, models, and basically all content.

Epic has setup a forum and wiki for the community to start discussing and talking to the developers about the development of this game. Epic will be posting their design documentations and summaries of their discussion on the forums and a wiki they've created. They want to share the development process of the game and get user feedback on all levels.

100% free? Free-2-Play?

They specifically said not F2P in the traditional sense,completely free and no microtransactions whatsoever,also fully moddable.

Livestream still going: http://www.twitch.tv/unrealengine

Here's a news link from IGN:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/05/08/epic-games-reveals-free-to-play-unreal-tournament

"Epic intends to create a marketplace where creators can give away or sell their custom content. Epic's cut from those sales is what will pay for the game."

"Unreal Tournament won't be available for some time, but as soon as there's a playable alpha, Epic will launch it so anyone can play"

That's actually really awesome.

Does this mean having a freely workable SDK? The mod scene could be nuts.

so they are developing a game that will make them no money? It makes no sense....

So weird, GB was talking about this happening yesterday

Yes. That's the goal here, get people using the Unreal 4 Engine. The game will basically be run by user created modifications and other content.

Epic's idea is if they get new gamers playing their free game on their big, moddable engine they'll get more future developers who know how to use their tools and thus more studios will invest into the Unreal 4 engine in the future. This is a big future investment into their engine.

Always preferred Quake 3 but this is great news. Will definably play as long as they don't somehow **** it up.

Looks like they're attempting to have the next source engine, that's great.

Exciting times ahead.

Not for no money. They will eventually make money off of the community market but the real investment is to get young modders using the Unreal 4 engine. This means in the future there will be more potential game devs that are familier with their engine and more development studios will invest into the Unreal 4 engine for their game.

This is why the CryEngine has a free SDK and most Unreal Engines, including the UDK, have had free versions. The Quake Engine was the same. This helps people learn the engine and be more inclined to use it in the future.

Actually Source a pretty big failure in terms of getting devs to use the engine. Very few games outside of Valve games actually used Source.

@TheFadeForever said:

Hopefully the color pallet is not like UT3.

@uninspiredcup said:

@TheFadeForever said:

Hopefully the color pallet is not like UT3.

Yeah I don't know what the hell was up with the color grading in UE3. Even Alice retained a bit of it and that's probably the most different looking Game from UT3, Gears there is.

This is like giving back to the community and it would be interesting to see what modders come up with

yeah but really I was referring to the Mod scene, which to me was probably the most impressive of the last gen shooters on pc.

Source was a beast when it came to custom user made content.

From the sounds of it, it seems to be like Team Fortress 2 with community made items and profit.

It wouldn't have been ever possible on consoles. I see they've made full circle to their modding roots.

....thats actually really clever on epics part.

more people using their tools which makes the game more marketable to other companies. if more people know how to use UE then its easier to find developers who can use UE tools.

more feedback from people on where the tools and/or docs fall down.

more people playing the game which gives the new engine a good battering. the best way to test a game (or any software really.) is to have thousands of people racking up millions of hours on it.

revenue stream for both epic and the content creators, of they choose to charge (itll be interesting to see how that plays out).

i wonder will the engine and content be pretty well seperated? i.e. when epic have new tech available in UE4 will they patch the new UT? maybe have a beta channel for engine upgrades for the game.

I don't think that will stop pc gamers from pirating the game lol.

but yeah, good luck with that, epic.

That. Is. Amazing. :o

Wha.

This is freaking brilliant. I mean it is not only awesome from the perspective of an old school shooter (really freaking awesome!) the game will preform two huge services for epic.

First: It will generate a tremendous amount of good will with the modding community. This is the first time they will have an open and official market where they can be compensated for their efforts. Second, this becomes the Kongregate of real games. Budding devs will be able to showcase their talent for resumes and make some money at the same time. It will replace Java as the default.

This is ever so neat. I can't wait for the next generation of "Lame free 'flash' games."

They'll still find a way to get to gated non-free content created for the service, trust me.

worst. pirate. ever.

Epic win for hermits. Holy shit that 2004 vibe.

hell fukin yes!!!! unreal is back baby. master race ftw. i really hope the community takes to this game and does awesome stuff with it

#postoftheday

That's pretty cool

Wasn't a huge fan of UT games but this is amazing. Another win for PC gamers and gaming in general.

This is actually pretty cool, I'll admit. Never played a UT game though (or for that matter, anything from Epic).

Well this more than make up for everything Epic done for pc gaming since 2004 ( well next to nothing ). I just hope this will be as fast paced as UT2k4

Problem with this approach is that 95% of the gaming community are giant douchebags. The end result will be a game designed by douchebags that rewards douchebags for being douchebags.

It's a competitive FPS, not some MMO.

It doesn't exist

It does exist

It doesn't exist

It does exist

Hope the game now stays existing.

Sometimes, Mods are the best kind of games. TF, CS, DOTA, ect. This is brilliant and is going to lead to so much amazing content. Most promising thing I've seen all year. The best part is it won't be a multiplat, so nothing will be dumbed down due to a console orientated build

Also, what's with SW's strong opinion on PC piracy? Piracy on consoles takes up a bigger percentage and is a bigger problem...

https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2012/09/22/gaming-piracy-separating-fact-from-fiction

A convenient 50% off Unreal pack at Steam.

Thank god it's a PC exclusive. I don't know if consoles were the reason for UT3 being arguably the worst and least played UT game, but it was the only time a true UT game came to consoles (although I admittedly had a lot of fun with Unreal Championship on Xbox, but it still wasn't Unreal Tournament in its true form).

I just hope it brings the series back to its glory days of UT2004 and the preceding games

As long as those items dont effect balance, then im ok with it,s imilar to TF2 hats.

wonderful news. and it's coming to linux too? damn that's awesome.

Epic is back baby.

Involving the community into a project like this from early on is a great idea. UT has always had a strong community and they are what made the games.

See, there are interesting PC exclusives after all :p

Of course, this is definitely something neat.

I can't pass up that chance to upset the more hardcore hermits here tho :P

As long as the game comes with a decent number of maps and weapons I'm all for it. I don't need hundreds of weapons like some modern shooters have, just the classic UT arsenal and the community can work from there (or even chip in with that)

They can't release it with one map and one weapon because the game would die out. Valve thought that people would just build a lot of content for Alien Swarm too. It was so barebones at launch that it died out. Shame, because the game itself was really good.

They´re just pilling up,from Unreal Tournament and Fortnite(two EPIC developed UE4 PC exclusives),Killing Floor 2,Star Citizen,Elite: Dangerous,all the RPG´s like the new Torment,obsidian´s Pillars of Eternity,Wasteland 2,all the horror games,AAA strategy games like the upcoming Civ Beyond Earth,Planetary Anihilation...man you can stay here all day naming all the good stuff in all sorts of genres.

It´s a great time to be a PC gamer.

OH OH PICK ME PICK ME!

"steam results survey"

*cry*

Today was a good day to be a PC gamer indeed. Age of Mythology EX and Bound by Flame released, Killing floor and UT got announced.

It'll be a while before I get another console.

Haha you should be embarrassed linking to that blog. So many assumptions and guesswork, makes Creationism look downright scientific. Then, in some parts he admits it's a bigger problem on PC but tries to downplay. What you said isn't supported by what's in that poorly written blog. He even had to admit faults in his theories at the bottom lmao.

Hell, the guy even admits devs like to release on console first for the big sales to recover development costs(Dark Souls 2 recent example) but tries to explain it away with royalty fees. Self ban for linking to that crap hahahaha.

I'm not surprised this is 100% free, just like the Hermies like their content.

I'd be amazed if Bound by Flame didn't end up being complete horseshit. Spider can make a pretty game, but not a very good game.

Sounds weird. How would Epic benefit from this?

Anyway, give me some more Unreal Tournament, I miss the UT2004 days.

oh wow