Amid Fortnite's Success, New Unreal Tournament Stops Development At Epic Games

Epic Games has confirmed that it has stopped actively developing the new, community-infused Unreal Tournament game. Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney confirmed to Variety that the free game is still playable and available to new users, but Epic itself has stopped working on it.

"Unreal Tournament remains available in the store but isn't actively developed," he said.

This may be sad for those who were playing and enjoying Unreal Tournament, but it's no surprise to learn Epic has stopped working on it. Back in September, Epic said the team working on it moved over to Fortnite to support that game's ongoing development. As of September, the game was officially "on hold," and that appears to continue to be the case.

Announced in 2014, the new Unreal Tournament was developed on Epic's Unreal Engine 4 and aimed to be "true to its roots as a competitive FPS." Epic was planning to develop the game "in the open," as a collaboration between Epic Games, Unreal Tournament fans, and Unreal Engine 4 developers. Epic also planned to offer a marketplace where fans can buy and sell new content.

Unreal Tournament is not the first game Epic stopped working on after Fortnite grew in popularity. In January this year, Epic announced its free-to-play MOBA Paragon was shutting down, with refunds available to everyone. More recently, some Fortnite: Save the World players have said they feel second-class as the battle royale mode gets seemingly more attention than the paid game. Save the World will transition to a free-to-play game like Fortnite: Battle Royale, but the transition was recently delayed to 2019.

Fortnite is hugely popular on a level that seems unprecedented in gaming, so it makes sense that Epic would pour significant resources into its ongoing development. Still, it remains to be seen if Epic becomes a one-game studio now that Fortnite is riding high. Of course, the studio also operates the massively successful Unreal Engine, while it also announced a new Steam competitor; so even if the studio's game development output is relatively lower, the studio is absolutely keeping busy with huge projects.