Welcome ladies, gentlemen to a new type of AAA title, one you help forge, with collaboration with Epic's Unreal team, to get the game you want to play!
Unreal Tournament is back, will be free and moddable!
Steven Polge (Project lead) has said: "We love Unreal Tournament, but Epic has limited resources and we were never able to devote the appropriate effort that Unreal Tournament deserves."
It's no surprising to see Epic using crowd sourcing to build its next title, with the release of the Unreal Engine 4 a few months ago, implementation of the marketplace, the slew of tutorials, it's clear they have been planning this announcement for a while.
“We'll be making all the decisions about how UT goes forward in close collaboration with the community, working to build a modern version of the experience that appeals to our fans and to PC gamers everywhere.” Polge stated.
A smart move by Epic, essentially opening the Unreal IP to content creators, all the development team needs to do, is select what gets ingame and support the developers whose ideas and works, fit the scope of Unreal Tournament's design.
Stacy Colleny Unreal's community manager states: "Unreal tournament will be developed for Windows, Linux and Mac"
Bringing the series for the first time to the full PC platform.
Fans of the franchise are invited to post their thoughts on what they want to see in the new Unreal Tournament over at the forums.
So what's the catch? Well really there isn't one, there's no micro transactions, its not free to play.
So how will this be viable to Epic in the long run? The answer seems to be a planned use of the Unreal marketplace, where you can already buy weapon packs and download free example content.
They plan to expand the market to the modding community, so you can give away or even sell your content, with Epic then taking a small slice of the pie.
Modders can start working and planning out their new Unreal Tournament mods, whilst the code is being developed, with full source code access from day one.
Join the development discussion over at the new Unreal Developer group creating a mod, add it here.
Track the games page to get notified of new mods, news and downloads.
Epic are giving you an opportunity here to really change your game! What will you create?
Closing thoughts:
Are Epic changing the face of modding by adding the ability to monetize your content, Is this a trend other developers will follow? Will this bring in a new trend of crowd-sourcing content, rather than crowd-sourcing funds, Will other developers embrace this development model?
Tell us what you think in the comments below!
Well, there is nothing wrong with wanting to earn a dime off of your work. They had to come up with an idea to truly keep UT4 Free (not free2play), so I guess this is a really good outcome when you look at it.
I think it's actually a genius idea and will keep most people happy, if it works, ofcourse.
I would rather pay for UT4 and got mods for free. Like Skyrim or something.
AAA game is one thing and paying for some Joe's mod only to discover it's a crap is another. From my TES experience only like 20% mods are good enough to stay.
Gonna play UT4 either way.
Words cannot express how happy I am. I hope they'll be doing it right, although I'm a bit concerned about this monetizing content thing.
Well, they'll have to make money off of it in some way. And this seems to me as a very fair way of doing things. No pay to win crap, just monetized user created content (which guarantees some quality control too).
Also pc exclusive. **** Yeah!!
Hell yea, A new UT !
I...am.....happy
Excellent idea there. All stolen from Valve lol, but EPIC is doing things well enough to stand on their own. I think for the common player it is too difficult to work with the editor, unless there will be a simplified version for UT.
This is a great idea, because it will let us mod the UT we want to see. After all, some of the best features in UT are derived from some of its mods. And its mutators were fun in the past, so this is like 1000x that.
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees
I really hope the sold content doesn't make it into the vanilla game...not even in the form of skins etc. Other than that, SUPER HYPED! Am considering to put my C++ skills to use on the project.
Will UT get responsive mouse input in the future? (like Quake engine?)
i really hate mouse lag.
I tried to install the original Unreal Tournament but mouse input is very sluggish and there is no crosshair. Youtube.com
It will get what the fans and contributes want aslong as it fits in with the scope of what UT is, raw input is pretty much a requirement for any twitch shooter. So i hope its an option.
Limited resources. heh. That's rich. All those engine licenses and they have limited resources. Go buy some you rich bastards!
I have a feeling this won't turn out well. I hope it does.
I hope it will still have free mods... loved the 2004 ones!
And I hope Invasion will be back with tons of mutators!
Pls, Don't **** this one up..
I hope they'll have some form of standardized guidelines on how to developed content for the game, along with tutorials/documentation to support it, otherwise the quality of entered content may not be...
...may not be good.
I want unreal gold coop
To be honest, I don't know what to say.
It's hard to believe that UT4 will be the described "Free" Game - with being able to purchase some mod content packs, it starts to sound like we'll need to purchase one or another DLC pack to get some bonuses, Or this may turn into the TF2 market, selling weapons for IRL cash, giving advantage over the many Freebies.
But maybe I haven't understood quite well.
Still, I wonder if it'll feature also Unreal's Co-operative gameplay.
They're indeed making money from it.
All these engine licences that cost $20/month will give them a nice little income.
And i bet you have to stay up-to-date with the development kit to be able to contribute.
So they're not charging the players for playing the game, they charge contributors, the ones that allready invest time and skill into forging something.
I'd rather like to see them offering a deal where you only have to give a fair share to Epic once you actually generate money with your stuff.
Like if you sell something on the built in shop, or for Hobby-/Indi-developers when they sell their game.
A free version of the UE4 without C++ source code would be a good start for content creators, to be able to contribute without beeing charged for it.
Right now it feels like: hey would you like to help me to create my game? Cool. But at first pay $20/month or you won't be allowed to do so.
Smart man! I didn't see that when I first read the news, but I came back here to write exactly the same thing. EPIC is gonna sell a shitload of subscriptions this way and they don't even have to make a game.
This approach sounds quite promising
This is where infiltration gets their play-time back !
Free
Linux
I love you.
Caveat: If you monetize weapon packs and content, how will that be supported by servers? Will you then have to have matching modifications as the server itself? Does the server host have to purchase said modifications -as well-?
Won't this create fragmentation among servers, creating a financial content barrier for server access?
I want the most realistic gore system incorporated into this game. I want all projectile types to do their own form of damage to the characters. That would make up for the lack of gore in UT3.
I hope the idea of paid game mods doesn't catch on by slippery slope. Imagine if Bethesda allowed this.
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