Epic Games Pulls Plug on Unreal Series
Next year, the Unreal series games will lose access to online features, as will a handful of other titles, and they are already disappearing from sales.
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Epic Games plans to disable network features in selected older games on PCs and consoles. From January 24 all games in the Unreal series, works by Harmonix (including the Dance Central series, with the exception of the VR unveiling) and several other game will offer multiplayer only in local mode.
The company made this decision to focus exclusively on supporting the free suite of services Epic Online Services, offering a shared friends list, parental controls and other features.
Games losing network features
- 1000 Tiny Claws
- Dance Central 1-3
- Green Day: Rock Band
- Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess
- Rock Band 1-3
- The Beatles: Rock Band
- Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars
- Unreal Gold
- Unreal II: The Awakening
- Unreal Tournament 2003
- Unreal Tournament 2004
- Unreal Tournament 3
- Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition
Epic Games has already begun to withdraw the above games and add-ons from digital distribution (including from Steam; example via SteamDB). For now, the Unreal series is still available on GOG.com.
In addition, Hatoful Boyfriend and Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Stay in macOS and Linux versions have been removed, as well as the mobile DropMix. Also excluded on December 30 will be the free tactical RPG Battle Breakers, which debuted in 2019.
Fortunately, the company also announced that Unreal Tournament III is set to receive online features back as part of Epic Online Services. No date was given, so you'll have to be patient - and hope that eventually Epic Games will still return to the series, or that at least fans will bring back online features in the iconic shooter on their own.
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Author: Jacob Blazewicz
Graduated with a master's degree in Polish Studies from the University of Warsaw with a thesis dedicated to this very subject. Started his adventure with gamepressure.com in 2015, writing in the Newsroom and later also in the film and technology sections (also contributed to the Encyclopedia). Interested in video games (and not only video games) for years. He began with platform games and, to this day, remains a big fan of them (including Metroidvania). Also shows interest in card games (including paper), fighting games, soulslikes, and basically everything about games as such. Marvels at pixelated characters from games dating back to the time of the Game Boy (if not older).
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