New Unreal Tournament to be free

Epic Games has announced that a new Unreal Tournament title is in development, and it will be created with user support and will be free to play.

A small team of UT veterans are beginning work on the project. From the very first line of code, the very first art created and design decision made, development will happen in the open, as a collaboration between Epic, UT fans and UE4 developers. The devs will be using forums for discussion, and Twitch streams for regular updates.

It will take many months until the game is playable by gamers. This is real development from scratch. When the game is playable, it will be free. Not free to play, just free. Epic will eventually create a marketplace where developers, modders, artists and gamers can give away, buy and sell mods and content. Earnings from the marketplace will be split between the mod/content developer, and Epic, which is how they plan to pay for the game and earn profits into the future.

"A lot of this is brand new for Epic, and we don’t yet have everything figured out. Things will probably definitely go wrong from time to time, and when they do, we’ll have to work through them together. There will be a lot of tough decisions to make, and not every feature will make it into the game. But if you’re a fan of Unreal Tournament, a UE4 developer, or a future modder – or if you just want to learn how we make games – we hope you’ll join us," said the company.

Unreal Tournament is a first-person shooter co-developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes, first released in November 1999. UT was designed as an arena FPS, with head-to-head multiplayer deathmatches being the primary focus of the game. The success of the original Unreal Tournament has spawned three sequels, including Unreal Tournament 2003 and Unreal Tournament 2004 and Unreal Tournament 3.

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