DescentBB

Just like what Epic did with all their DOS games. They killed off Unreal, UT99, UT2004 along with other titles. Can't even get them on Steam, GOG or any other online store.

https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/ne ... lder-games

UT3 on the other hand is going free to play on Steam.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/14/235 ... ansactions

This is why i arggggg, you pay for a game then poof its gone.

They killed off online I believe. But if there is no one playing, then why keep it going?

UT99 is very much alive and kicking in multiplayer. UT2004 is still played but doesn't have near the player count that UT99 does. UT Flop 3 has the lowest player base, and Epic wants to keep this one around? While Epic is shutting down their official servers, community hosted servers will still be running. Workarounds are already in progress for a new master server, so the browser functionality will still work in the game.

The first two Unreal games have full-fledged singleplayer modes, right? And UT always had bot modes? How the ★■◆● can they justify erasing them from existence like that?

The first Unreal features both singleplayer and multiplayer. Unreal 2 started off with singleplayer but later got a multiplayer expansion pack called XMP, not sure if it was an official patch. Who knows what led them to this decision. I wonder if other games like Gears of War will meet the same fate at some point.

This still makes me laugh: "We have plans to bring back online features via Epic Online." Yeah UT3, save the game you lost money on. Epic morons.

I gotcha.

https://www.oldunreal.com

That's pretty cool. I'll have to check it out later.

I did actually like UT3, but I'm not about to pretend it was the most influential or greatest achievement in any way. Most people point to UT99 for that, although my favorite in the series is U1 by quite some distance.
I still have copies of all of the games, but yeah, removing them from sale is a bizarre decision that helps nobody. We went through this with Descent - nobody wants to go back to the "uhh eBay I guess" days.

Don't understand why they would force them to be removed. It makes no sense.

I still have Unreal Gold and UT99 GOTY in my GOG games list, and I can still d/l them (just tried). Same version as what I already have archived.

Yet again, I keep telling people...if you like it, save it, because they *will* take it away.

Anyone know how GOG installers work? As far as I know, you just run the install, and GOG doesn't track it or care. I've run them a dozen times for one game when I was testing OS and VMs and whatnot. If they aren't even selling them anymore, I could post the offline installers, but only if that won't get my account dinged.

My understanding of how this works is you can still buy the games and play the games, but the official multiplayer/match making servers are being shut down so multiplayer will be more complicated.

Unreal Gold and Unreal Tournament are now free to download on the Internet Archive. UT2003/2004 probably won't be too far behind.

https://archive.org/details/ut-goty