[pbrum]

Not long ago I was looking at my favorite games of decades past. Unreal Tournament figured very prominently, made of course by Epic. So I wondered: why did they stop making Unreal games? I looked at their game chronology. On one hand, they made Gears of War, an Xbox exclusive that never interested me. And the other one? Oh, right: Fortnite. That's where Unreal Tournament went. They made tons of money for sure. But no company, including Epic, has made a competitive FPS + CTF game as solid as UT, UT2003, or UT2004 since that era

[hapticmonkey]

They had Unreal Tournament 4 in development around 2018 but it never gained much traction in the pre-alpha phase. Once Fortnite blew up they seemed to just focus on that and their app store.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3botRkqnwk

[cma]

I think the Unreal Tournament 4 team was moved to Fortnite after the success of PUBG to rapidly turn it into a battle royale.

[roncinephile]

Halo Infinite is the closest I've gotten to the UT feeling nowadays. Simple arena, equal playing field, drop in drop out, tools-not-loadouts design. It's a shame how a variable and strong design gets put off into the corner to wither.

[archagon]

Splitgate 1 felt a lot like UT2k4 combined with Halo to me. Really fast, really fun.

[danpalmer]

I wanted to play UT2004 for some nostalgia recently. Turns out even though I own it on the Epic game store, I can't play it because Epic removed it from the Epic game store.

[Narishma]

Didn't they make the game free? Or was that just UT99?

[chupasaurus]

They removed all UT games from online stores and added UT 3X which is a free version of UT3 with Epic Online Services baked instead of original ones.

The only way one could legally get UT99 is to buy physical. And it's been like that for many years prior to an event above, which also disabled the server browser after 22 years of running intact.

[johnnyanmac]

Same reason valve doesn't make games anymore. They followed the money and licensing their engine did a lot more than making games. Any games they made were to showcase the engine.

They just happened to hit the goldmine with Fortnite.

[justinhj]

I think the problem is also that there are many FPS multiplayer CTF games even if they are not all great, they all compete for attention in a crowded market. Destiny, Call of Duty and all their variants.