A collaborative effort between Epic, fans, and Unreal Engine 4 devs
Epic Games made its “future of Unreal Tournament” announcement and it’s actually promising. There is, in fact, a new game in the works — starting today with “a small team of UT veterans” — that’ll be developed in open collaboration with series fans and Unreal Engine 4 developers.
It’s going to be free when it’s released for Windows/Mac/Linux, although that won’t be anytime soon. Epic will fund the game through an eventual marketplace in which devs, modders, artists, and gamers can buy, sell, or give away mods and content. The company will take a cut of earnings and stresses that the intent is for the new Unreal Tournament to be “just free,” not “free to play.”
Updates will be streamed by way of Twitch, if you’re fine just watching. Fans can participate in the forums, while UE4 devs will have full access to code on GitHub. My fear is that this project might become a “too many cooks in the kitchen” situation, but UT fans seem to know what they want, and Epic is promising a title that’s “true to its roots as a competitive FPS.” Fingers crossed.