Unreal Tournament made Fortnite possible in the first place – thus bringing about its own end

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The Unreal Tournament series is considered one of the most influential shooter franchises in the world. Actually, Epic wanted to relaunch the series. But in 2017, the team was pulled to make a PUBG clone of a failed Minecraft-like game“ to develop, which should become a worldwide success under the name Fortnite: Battle Royale. But for unreal tournament the success of Fortnite was the beginning of the end.

What was the plan?

  • Unreal Tournament is an iconic shooter series that ran three titles from 1999 to 2007.
  • In 2014, Epic Games announced that it would relaunch the series together with fans (via gamestar). The friends of the game celebrated this.
  • But then Fortnite intervened.

    • Epic always has to think about its “Unreal Engine”, one of the most powerful engines on the market, here you can see what should be possible in the future:

    Unreal Engine 5.2: Next-Gen Graphics Tech Demo – State of Unreal 2023

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    Team at Unreal Tournament pulled up Fortnite: Battle Royale in just 2 months

    This is how it really happened: Epic Games launched a new super game in the summer of 2017 after many years: Fortnite – Save the World. The game should bring the new version of the Unreal Engine to the fore in the summer slump of 2017, at least that was the plan:

  • During the day, players could collect loot, build forts, and set traps
  • At night they defended their fortresses against hordes of zombies
  • A kind of “Minecraft during the day” – then “shooting like in Doom” at night.

    • However, the game was so overloaded with microtransactions and grind that it only survived a short time before dying of breath.

    While Fortnite was flopping, battle royale shooter PUBG was thriving in 2017. It was the biggest game on Steam, a huge gaming phenomenon.

    Also powered by the Unreal engine, PUBG had a lot of technical issues but played like crazy on PC. The concept of “everyone against everyone and whoever survives wins” that people knew from the cinema was exciting and entertaining.

    It also made PUBG its first really big hit on Twitch.

    Many players who later became stars on Twitch, such as DrDisrespect, Ninja or Fortnite were playing PUBG at the time – albeit in front of fewer viewers than later.

    That changed the fate of the gaming world: As far as we know from a developer conference, Epic Games told the team that had been working on Unreal Tournament to move to Fortnite and build a “Battle Royale” mode there. The team pulled this battle royale mode up in 2 months and then apparently wanted to go back to Unreal Tournament, but by then it was too late.

    The PUBG developers were furious, but Fortnite was such a mega success that Epic Games has now sent all its forces to Fortnite: Battle Royale to constantly add content there. To accomplish this, they killed another hopeful project, the shooter Paragon, and also stopped development on Unreal Tournament, as officially announced in December 2018 (via gamestar).

    At that time, you mainly heard the cries of pain from Paragon fans, who to this day accuse Epic Games of having killed their game, which had so much potential, for Fortnite. But the success of Fortnite also hit the fans of Unreal Tournament hard.

    Epic plans to reboot Unreal Tournament for free, but kills it

    This was the next plan: After years of silence, two news came for Unreal Tournament in December 2022. At that time, Epic took almost all Unreal games off the market (via pc gamer).

    But at the same time, in December 2022, clues were found in Steam’s code that Epic Games was planning a game called “Unreal Tournament 3 x”:

  • The game was supposed to be a remastered of Unreal Tournament 3.
  • It should be completely free, with no microtransactions and no tricks.
  • It should appear on Steam, Epic Games Store and GOC and allow crossplay.

    • That was a big glimmer of hope for the battered fans – although the game was never officially announced, only appeared in Steam code.

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    That’s how it went now: In June 2023, another change in the Steam code was discovered: Apparently, Epic Games “secretly” killed the new edition of Unreal Tournament 3. The page has been restored to a previous state.

    Since Epic Games has “delisted” practically every Unreal game in 2022 and the glimmer of hope for a current Unreal Tournament 3 has also been deleted, fans can no longer play their favorite franchise officially, but are dependent on private servers.

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    The players are desperate and pissed off. Two culprits were quickly found: Epic Games and their mega-success Fortnite.

    From the Unreal Tournament friends’ point of view, Fortnite, which they don’t really care about, has killed their favorite games for the second time. Unreal Tournament is actually Fortnite’s dad and obstetrician.

    Epic sacrificed a lot for the success of Fortnite: Battle Royale:

    The original Fortnite players are really pissed off right now – and rightly so

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