Epic Video games is popping off Unreal Match, however there’s a silver lining – Esports

Epic Video games introduced the closure of a number of “out-of-date” on-line servers, however keen-eyed Steam customers have noticed a silver lining.

Epic Video games has introduced the closure of over a dozen on-line sport companies as the corporate strikes to help its on-line choices solely with its unified buddies system, voice chat options, parental controls, and parental verification options. The closure was introduced at present on Epic Video games’ official web site.

With the announcement, Epic Video games has successfully ended on-line help for everything of the Unreal Match collection, save Unreal Match 3, which Epic has “plans to convey again on-line options by way of Epic On-line Providers sooner or later.” Nevertheless, this implies Unreal Gold, Unreal II: The Awakening, Unreal Match: Recreation of the 12 months Version, Unreal Match 2003, and Unreal Match 2004 will stop their on-line operation, leaving solely small personal servers working the sport.

About Unreal Match

Unreal Match is extensively considered probably the most beloved enviornment shooters of the early 2000s. Together with Quake 3 Area, UT paved the best way for contemporary shooters resembling Halo and Overwatch, pioneering the Seize the Flag codecs. 

Its sequels, 2003 and 2004, have been a part of an try and create a yearly franchise akin to Madden NFL or FIFA. However, regardless of a robust begin in ’03 and the addition of car fight in ’04 (to compete with the intensely standard Halo), the collection fell out of favor. 2007 was the final time the sport obtained an entry. 

UT and its sequels are nonetheless accessible to play on-line on Epic Video games till January 24, however native play will stay accessible. The listing of affected video games, together with a number of Rock Band titles, might be discovered right here.

Hope for the longer term?

With the removing of the collection comes a silver lining, although. Eager-eyed Steam customers noticed {that a} new model of Unreal Match 3 had been revealed on the platform. Unreal Match 3 X is seemingly totally interesting to the boomer shooter viewers with its proclamation of “No microtransactions and no strings hooked up. That is the fully-featured, award-winning first-person shooter you fell in love with… utterly free.”

On the time of writing, the Steam web page acknowledged, “This title is at present unavailable and can be accessible sooner or later. Keep tuned!” and “Discover: Unreal Match 3 X is not accessible on the Steam retailer.” The latter is probably going as a result of this model of UT3 makes use of the identical Steam App ID (13210) as the unique UT3 launched on the platform in 2009. 

So, for now, get in as a lot UT as potential, and hope this newer model will launch in time for Epic’s closure of the service. See you on Going through Worlds!

Michael Hassall

Michael is a UK-based content material creator who caught the esports bug in 2010, however took eight years to determine he ought to write about it. Throwing away a promising profession in advertising and marketing and PR, he now specialises in MOBAs, overlaying League of Legends, Dota 2, and esports basically since 2019. When not glued to tournaments happening on the opposite aspect of the globe, he spends time nurturing an unhealthy habit to MMOs and gacha video games.