Why Unreal Tournament 4 Was Cancelled

Unreal Tournament helped define online first-person shooters, but it seems the series may be on life support. It’s been over twelve years since the release of the last Unreal Tournament game, and it’s going to be a lot longer until fans get another one. After announcing a reboot of the series in 2014 with Unreal Tournament, or Unreal Tournament 4 as some call it, and releasing the game’s pre-alpha on their website over a year ago, Epic Games has officially announced they would no longer continue development on series’ latest installment.

Created by Epic Games in 1999, the first Unreal Tournament game was a sequel to 1998’s Unreal, a first-person shooter that showcased the capabilities of the Unreal Engine. The original Unreal game was a sci-fi first-person action, shooter similar to titles like Quake and Doom. After the success of the first game, sequels took the Unreal series from action shooter to competition. The first Unreal Tournament game was groundbreaking, as it emphasized multiplayer gameplay in a first-person shooter. Players would be dropped in an arena and compete in various game modes to work their way up the leader board until they were crowned Grand Champion.

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Unreal Tournament was a success both critically and commercially, winning numerous Game of the Year awards and earning over $5.4 million. Fans and critics both praised the game for its impressive graphics, creative weapons, and excessive gore. Unreal Tournament is one of the first shooters to incorporate game modes like Team Deathmatch and Capture The Flag; modes that are now customary in nearly every online first-person shooter. The series would only continue to grow in popularity with each passing installment as they began making their way to home consoles. Unreal Tournament 3 released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2008 to good reviews, but another official entry in the series hasn’t been released since.

Fornite Killed Unreal Tournament

When a new Unreal Tournament game was first announced in 2014, fans were ecstatic. It had been seven years since Unreal Tournament 3 and players were eager to see what these games would be like on the next generation of consoles. Development for the game went smoothly enough that the game’s pre-alpha was released for download on the Epic Games website. Unfortunately, something got in the way of Unreal Tournament 4’s development; Fortnite.

Fornite was a modest game at the time of its first release in 2015, but after the inclusion of a Battle Royale mode in September 2017, everything changed. The free-to-play game became one of the most popular games ever created by early 2018. Fornite captured an entire new generation of gamers and only continues to grow in popularity. As a result, the game needed more people at Epic Games working on it. This meant taking some people off of the Unreal Tournament 4 team and moving them over to Fortnite’s development. Eventually, as Fortnite‘s popularity continued to grow, there weren’t enough hands left to work on the next Unreal Tournament, so plans for further development were eventually cancelled. Tim Sweeney, head of Epic Games, has since confirmed that Unreal Tournament is no longer in active development.

This news is heartbreaking for fans of the Unreal series, but on the bright side, the pre-alpha for Unreal Tournament is still available for download on the Epic Games website. Seeing as they haven’t taken down the demo yet, there’s still hope the developer could eventually revisit the unfinished game. That is, if Fortnite’s popularity ever manages to die down.

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