_{All interview sections (the parts marked as quotes) were recorded by Kurrgan.}

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Back in 2020 I covered my favourite Arena shooter for a Dead Game Review, a game which got a lot of love from fans, but was eventually left behind by the studio that developed it. Unreal Tournament 4 was far from a popular game, it wasn’t even that widely advertised as it was unfinished and in continued development, which meant that for many the new entry to the Unreal Tournament series was hidden in plain sight.

I was lucky to have found Unreal Tournament 4 in 2015 and I made sure to keep track of the project over the years to come, even after it was left for dead when that other game Epic developed received its battle royale mode. I was rest assured, Unreal was not going anywhere, if I ever wanted to play, it would always be there on the Epic Games Store ready to download!

The newest and least finished Unreal game of them all also was a formal introduction into the franchise for me. Even though the computer was the main platform of choice since I was a 7 year old child back in 2006, multiple roadblocks prevented me from ever experiencing the franchise.

For one, the series was banned for purchase in Germany and my parents would have never bought the game for me as they took an interest in what media I consumed, something that I was annoyed about back then but which I am eternally grateful for in retrospect.

Second, our family computer wasn’t the best and I doubt it could have run some of the newer entries into the series.

And finally, I was a far less computer savvy person at the time too with torrenting and game cracking and basic PC related troubleshooting being foreign concepts to me, skills which I picked up slowly over time.

For many other players, like for instance for our guests today, the introduction came at a much earlier point in time!

My name’s Jeremy, my online is Phantaci. I’ve gone as some variant of Phantaci, whether it’s the C or an S, it’s spelled P-H-A-N. You know, it’s up to creativity. So I started as Phantaci on Playstation 3, on console. I’m going to say, you know, it came out late 2007, and then I kind of played that until around 2012-ish/2013. But I have been playing UT since 2007.

• Phantaci

Unreal came into my life very early. I was, it was the year 1999. So I was 12 years old. And I have actually played this game consistently in all its various renditions, all the way to present time. So over 20 years.

• Exit Next Right

So I started playing Unreal Tournament. And uuh, someone’s going to knock on my dad’s door after this, but he was big, he got into PC gaming right at the kickoff of it, you know the mid 90s playing Quake and Quake 2. So he played a lot of Quake 2, he’s played some Quake 3. He eventually got his hands on the Voodoo card, the old accelerator card, and that gave him the ability to play Unreal. He played bot match and then he picked up Unreal Tournament.

And of course, like, he loved it and enjoyed it. He got into the map making tools and he had that as a creative outlet and I was watching him do this. And you know, like anyone would he wanted to share that passion. So he, you know, I was interested in learning how to do it and he was interested in showing me, so he sat me down as a I don’t even know how old I would’ve been… Young, we’ll go with young, maybe 10, 9?

• Nick Burns

After having played Unreal Tournament 4 almost 8 years ago, I explored other titles in the series, playing some of the campaign of Unreal Gold, deathmatching in Unreal Tournament 99 and 2004 and Unreal Tournament 3, with clear preferences forming and the latest iteration of the series emerging as my favourite.

As someone who did previously immerse himself into competitive Quake like shooters, with Team Fortress 2 having been my first long term comfort game and later on playing various classic Doom and Quake titles, exploring the established rival series was an eye opener for me, not only when it comes to the differences in gameplay mechanics, but also through exploring the wider impact Unreal and it’s engine has brought forth in many partaking in the hobby. From legendary maps, music and even something as simple as announcer packs finding their way into different games.

Similar to how id Software brought out the best in aspiring game developers, Epic Mega Games was a pivotal company in the game development scene, with many older Unreal Engine titles coming bundled with an editor and files being left accessible for the up and coming modder to have a crack at making their own ideas come to fruition, while also allowing other players to experience these creations from the most talented and dedicated in their community.

Unreal and Quake showed early on how important a modding scene can be for a game’s longevity and cultural impact, as decades after the first games in the series came out, they are still cherished and frequently played by fans, with Quake even being ported to newer consoles and both franchises enjoying a somewhat splintered but nonetheless dedicated community of players, eager to improve and get better in the games they adore so much, or to experience casual fun with arranged bot matches and the latest mods and maps one downloaded.

Unbeknownst to players at the time, the legacy of Unreal Tournament would be put to the test by none other than Epic Games themselves.

The Unlisting

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On January 24th 2023, all Unreal games were pulled off digital storefronts, with only Unreal Tournament 3 being granted a re-release some time in the future, but we do not know of an exact release date yet. Initially the only news anyone heard of, related to a Steam Store page which Wario64 uncovered on Twitter, which was generally regarded as positive news in the community, even though Unreal Tournament 3 is somewhat of a black sheep in the franchise.

Unreal Tournament 3 X is coming, completely free with crossplay between Steam, EGS, and GOG https://t.co/mZCrRnoVBj

"No microtransactions and no strings attached. This is the fully-featured, award-winning first-person shooter you fell in love with… completely free." pic.twitter.com/dzlRx48ngd

— Wario64 (@Wario64) December 14, 2022

I was quite enthusiastic about the news too, as someone who likes to explore the more inactive side of multiplayer gaming, I thought that this was excellent news! A big game company revitalising an older game to give that title another shot and garnering a newer player base is a great idea and if any company can gamble, it certainly is Epic Games!

But my celebration was short lived, as soon after a bombshell was dropped on us, and you know what it is. Not only was Epic planning to turn off all the masterservers from past Unreal Tournament games, but to add insult to injury, all games would be taken off the Steam store, which means that there is no legitimate way to play these titles anymore, except if one contends on buying a second hand copy of one of the games on a physical disc, or opts to buying a key. At this rate it is safe to say that one should just download the games for free at this rate, as Epic Games aren’t interested in selling Unreal games any time soon. Epic’s choice for the unlisting is baffling to say the least.

What many people say, and which I mostly agree with, is that it is rather disappointing that Epic Games treats the franchise that put them on the map with such disrespect, but what also is clear and understandable too is that Epic Games aren’t a charity and they may do with their properties what they want, so if they want to shut down all the servers and essentially kill their own games… they technically can.

I think they’ll continue to exist. I think though like I said in my video, it will be harder and harder to discover series. And I did get some comments that I thought were interesting but unhelpful in that people were like “Anyone who would discover it has discovered it.” You know, don’t worry about discover everybody knows about it.

I don’t think that’s the case. […] Lots of people, lots of younger people discover, you know, I liken it to this. You got someone who was born in like 2010, you know, and they discovered Led Zepplin. And like, you know, hard rock from like the 60s and 70s, like they’re… And they like it. And they want to go find it and they want to go listen to it, you know. It’s the same thing in games, right? You know, someone will discover UT99 and go “This thing is fun. It’s crazy off the walls. I want to continue to play this.” And I think discovery that way will be made much more challenging. Or unfortunately, all of them will be funnelled into UT3X or UTX or whatever they’re going with in that front.

• Nick Burns

Realistically though, Unreal Tournament is unbelievably difficult to kill, especially the older titles which were products of simpler times, and which are well documented and popular amongst modders and system admins. Many also are willing to go through heaven and hell just to play their favourite games one more time; patches, torrent downloads, messing around in CFG files, no problem.

But one game in the franchise was in dire straights; Unreal Tournament 4 was at risk of not being playable after the main servers shut down. Due to it using central servers for a multitude of functions which would need to phone home to the server and listen for a response back, it meant that those central servers needed to be reverse engineered, which normally is quite hard to accomplish. Yet key figures in the community proved soon enough that Unreal Tournament players do not give up easily!

And I think that for UT4 there’s unique challenges. I think that that game, you know, understandably probably has the smallest footprint of them all in that it was not even a finished product and it’s the newest. So it has the lowest scale of community.

• Nick Burns

Booting up the games

#

So, what does Unreal look like after the master servers shut down?

The server browsers do not work anymore for all of the Unreal titles, even Unreal Tournament 3 which will be getting a new server system some time in the future, which we can only hope will preserve the previous methods of hosting and joining games.

_{Editor’s Note: This new server system project, UT3X, was later cancelled by Epic.}

The only modes you can play are the singleplayer campaigns and bot matches, which for many is enough to enjoy the game, but for the multiplayer fans, things look rough.

The good thing is that the crafty players figured out ways in which they could play Unreal games together again. For Unreal Tournament 2004 the community had to make use of custom masterservers for a good while already, and the community of Unreal Tournament 99 finally got their own masterserver replacement as well.

The most baffling unlistings are Unreal Gold and Unreal 2: The Awakening, both games which feature singleplayer components - Gold being terrific, two being terrible - in addition to the multiplayer action. Quality of the campaign aside, Unreal Gold and Unreal 2 would still be worth purchasing if one wanted to experience the singleplayer campaigns.

Nonetheless, the game in the franchise which worried me most was Unreal Tournament 4, as it is a game with a relatively small player base. So far every game except Unreal Tournament 4 booted without much effort and setup required and one could easily get into a bot match and explore the gameworld.

Gaining access to the files also is only a few searches away, with archive.org featuring numerous downloads for various versions of prior Unreal games, even console versions you could load onto a Jailbroken Playstation device, and not to mention, DRM free Good Old Games copies float around the web as well and you don’t need to be scared off from downloading the games in this manner. Epic are not making money on those games either way, so feel free to download to your heart’s content!

To focus on Unreal Tournament 4, you cannot download the game from the Epic Games Store anymore, but there are links which one could access to download the files.

Game download, not affiliated with Epic Games (Torrent): magnet:?xt=urn:btih:e28bcffef44a884da0d5c1c98c136921865a0001&dn=UT4%20Installer%20-%20v1.0.3.zip

Game download, not affiliated with Epic Games (UT4Ever): https://ut4ever.org/downloads

Once the files are unpacked, you somehow need to start the game. Follow this tutorial from timiimit on his website in order to get the game up and running. If this is your first time playing Unreal Tournament 4, you will have to create a shortcut of the game’s exe first and add the line that was written down on the website into the launch commands first. Then you can start the game and already have fun with bots. To gain access to the master servers and play online, you follow the rest of the guide and create an account on timiimit’s website!

Here comes Unreal Tournament 4

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Even though Unreal Tournament 4 has issues and roadblocks were always present as you may have noticed after watching my previous video on Unreal Tournament 4 back in 2019, the game still offers things that a multitude of other experiences do not, and some of these offerings are even becoming more and more unique in the Arena shooter genre itself.

The gameplay itself is excellent, although it features various alterations to the base Unreal formula, some of which have been received well, while others were not that popular. Sliding and wallrunning added much more versatility to the movement, yet the double jump from previous games has been removed.

Then, some weapons were simplified, for instance one of the more controversial choices was to split the rocket launcher into two weapons: The rocket launcher itself which retains its secondary fire mode with the option to launch grenades removed, and the grenade launcher, which can launch sticky explosives which detonate on command, and standard grenade pills which bounce around the environment and explode on their own or on impact.

Despite some more or less popular changes in gameplay here or there, the core of Unreal Tournament essentially still remained the same, being skill based competition on an equal playing ground with the only differentiating factor being the experience of each individual competitor in the ring.

Even for the less experienced players like myself, the will to get better becomes infectious and a palpable progression in skill can sometimes be observed over the course of a single duel match. You start using weapons you did not before, suddenly you are surviving for minutes on end instead for only 30 to 40 seconds, you begin to land trick shots and headshots from time to time and you may even land a kill or pick up an item before your experienced opponent gets the chance to. These small compounding victories can be observed if you stick to it and keep playing any Unreal game as a sport!

Due to the way that you’re on equal footing with your opponent, and there’s 9 different weapons along with each of them having an alternate fire mode, and then there’s the timer elements and all these different elements to the game. It is almost like chess but really fast paced, because no one would say “Oh, chess is a non skill based game.” That’s just not true, chess is very skill based and lots of grandmasters work many hours to reach that ranking. It’s the same thing with Unreal Tournament.

• Exit Next Right

Being an extremely individualistic game in terms of design, it also allows the player to use every tool in their belt in order for them to develop their own style, and not only that, Unreal Tournament always was a breeding ground for some of the most capable combatants in Esports!

What other game would you be able to identify a player by simply watching him play? I’ve actually called 2 or 3 different players out simply by their play style. Knowing how Trinnatec places his rockets, knowing how MASH moves, knowing how Mike the Unit aims. I actually know these guys, I know where they like to play, I know how they play. So even when people alias there’s a semi decent chance we can pick it out if you have any unique elements to your game. That tells me that the different people bring a different element to the game, the different personalities can express themselves in different ways on the game.

And I love that fact because if I go in (and again I keep railing on Call of Duty), but if I log into Call of Duty there is only one single meta, grab an Assault Rifle or a Sniper and just go and click.

• Exit Next Right

Similar to Quake, Unreal Tournament is a game like no other, which first and foremost incentivises the cultivation of individual skill. Of course many different games offer various kinds of gameplay expression and reward the progression of someone’s abilities in different ways, but Unreal Tournament is special in the sense that it offers both a truly neutral playing ground and a capable sandbox for the player to explore.

You’re given a blank battlefield with which to paint a beautiful canvas. It is a 100% skill based shooter and the plays that are made on the battlefield are plays that were made not out of a feature of a game, but out of the actions of a mind.

And that’s why I love Unreal Tournament, you look at that combo that Poe hit on us, that took someone of extreme skill to do that. And I’ll tell you right now, our team was capturing that flag, except for that one Hail Mary play.

The proverbial sandbox extends far beyond individualistic player expression; Instead, it is part of Unreal Tournament’s identity to the point where even different gameplay modes can become specialisations for certain players.

One specialisation doesn’t even revolve around killing other players at all, it rather centres its focus on running through a map as fast as possible. Bunnytrack maps are parcours courses which require the player to master the game’s movement mechanics for them to optimise their times and run through a map as fast as they can.

Bunny Tracks is the mode where you kind of develop your movement skills, right? And so you kind of try to create the levels as fast as possible and map makers will obviously make these jumps and these things where like you have to have like a perfect dodge or a perfect jump.

• Phantaci

While Unreal’s movement may seem simple when compared to the bunnyhopping and rocket jumping of Quake at first, it is worth looking into deeper as experienced players will recognize a noob in seconds based on movement alone. Bunnytrack maps may be a great place to start learning the ins and outs of Unreal Tournament’s movement mechanics!

I think one thing that deepened this relationship between the game and the players, was that the collaboration between the developers and the community was a fundamental concept for its development from day one, which meant that skins, weapon models, cosmetics, maps, music, anything that can be created, was in a large part created by the community, with the potential for digital items to be sold through a marketplace to support them, similar to how various Valve games handle their own game monetisation.

The difference with Unreal Tournament 4 is that the entire game was shaped through community efforts along the way, and this was obvious when continuously playing the game, or when picking it up again after an extended break. I remember the Enforcer and Bio-Rifle changed shape completely for instance, features being adjusted, removed or added and maps continuously getting polished. Then development suddenly stopped.

I think the greatest chunk of irony out of it all is the fact that at the bottom corner of the login screen or any loading screen it says “Unreal Tournament alpha is a work in progress and a collaboration by Epic Games and the commmunity.” it’s like, this did not age well.

• Nick Burns

Fortnite, Unreal and Epic

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In 2017 Unreal Tournament 4 got its last update, and since the game never was officially cancelled, the anxiety of the dedicated player base continuously grew. The developers who previously worked on Unreal Tournament 4 thus began work on Fortnite Battle Royale and the game has been continuously worked on since. Epic didn’t contract any studios or hire new developers for them to resume work on Unreal, so sadly the project didn’t really go anywhere.

Epic’s developers were kept busy nonetheless, as Fortnite’s live service model would require them to keep constant momentum going, with more and more character models, animations, sound and features being added and tweaked in a steady pace continuously since 2017, which paid off, with Fortnite becoming not only a game, but a cultural phenomenon in part at the expense of the Unreal Tournament 4 community.

You know, in a world with games that are free to play and microtransactions it’s all about keeping the player there and engaged with your game. You know, and Epic currently with Fortnite has taken the hard way, right? You know, as someone with with my finger to the pulse on sort of stuff in the industry and jobs and so on. You know, they turn over developers and animators and modelers and artists constantly because they work them to the bone desperately trying to keep up the content train, you know, that helps support that game.

That’s what keeps people playing it over and over and over again is that every week there’s 6 new characters kind of thing you know, just over and over and over and over again…

• Nick Burns

What left Unreal Tournament 4 fans with a bad taste in their mouth, also were various homage additions to other game properties which to a wider audience of people felt like neat little callbacks, but which to a subset of the Unreal community felt like salt was being rubbed into a wound, with facing world’s theme Foregone Destruction making its way into Fortnite under the name “Unreal Chill” and some of Unreal’s most iconic weapons making their way into Digital Extremes’ Warframe.

In isolation those additions clearly weren’t intended to upset any players, in the case of Digital Extremes especially so, as the developer is just as responsible as Epic in turning Unreal Tournament into a household name. For some of the players however that love the most neglected entry into the Unreal Tournament series like myself, those additions felt bitter, which could have been avoided if Epic just cancelled the game in advance instead of letting us hang in a limbo of speculation.

What I said to Cheecken, which I didn’t record, he was like “thank you” because he was, I guess it must have been profound to him or something. But throughout playing this game there’s always this pipe dream thought of maybe they’ll come back to the game, maybe they’re not, you know… It’s on hiatus, and even though the game is going to get maintained by the community, whether Epic likes it or not, the fact that they are shutting it down, it squashes that pipe dream. It confirms that it’s, you know, they’re never coming back to it.

• Kurrgan

It does. Yeah, you know Unreal Tournament was something that we were excited for, the community was fully on board. And then to be abandoned, to be completely forgotten, was enough of a blow. It really was. Now thanks to the amazing developers and community, we have a game that has an extensive ecosystem. We’ve got mutators, we’ve got mods, we’ve got various things that plug into the game that were all created by the community. Lots of content.

And to be frank the game would not be playable without the contributions of the community itself, because the developers had lost touch with what Unreal Tournament was. And to be forgotten was definitely a blow, but then to be shut down with absolutely zero notice… They didn’t even, it was just “Oh hey on January 24th we’re shutting everything down.” it was a buy note in a social media post. The community was shocked, and Epic Games did not have the common courtesy to DM the administrators of the various communities, they just simply said: “Hey, we’re pulling the plug.”

That was such a devastating announcement that I in fact shed tears in reality, because Unreal Tournament means a lot to a lot of players. And there is a sector of players that once Unreal Tournament goes away, they won’t have interest in gaming. And they’ll be moving on to other things, because there are very few games that provide the same level of immersion and content and challenge that Unreal Tournament can offer.

• Exit Next Right

On January 24, 2023, we will be turning off online services for some older Unreal and Unreal Tournament titles. Players can continue to play single or local multiplayer modes offline. Thank you for playing and creating for the Unreal series over the years! https://t.co/4aLoMYFACh

— Unreal Tournament (@utgame) December 14, 2022

Unreal, Uncertainty and the Community

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Even though Unreal is widely credited to be one of the most competitive shooters ever made, the series seems to have been cursed when it relates to the mainstream competitive scene, as organised matches seem to only ever have happened in more closer knit communities or as a personal sport between players.

And see, the amazing thing about this game is you can get good, but mastery always feels like it’s a step out there. And mastery of Unreal Tournament, there’s few that can claim it. And so it has various modes and you may be really good at flag-based modes, but then there’s the cage match, the boxing ring, the one-on-one, mano-a-mano, no teammates, no excuses, dual showdown. That is a mode that I was introduced to through some friends that played Capture the Flag.

So I stepped into the arena, and you have the same stats as your opponent, and you both have the same arena before you, and the same choices. But only one man will come out ahead, and you have to navigate that, it’s how you battle, it’s the choices you make on the battlefield, it’s a game of control. And so through learning duel, I went from not being a duelist at all to now being a decent-level duelist but that has been a deep learning experience for me, where I’ve had to really identify areas that I need to change, and areas that I need to grow. And every loss you have to sit down and say… Because you can’t blame, you have to look inward and say what, “That opponent bested me, and I’ve got to give them the respect, and that was due to the choices I made on the battlefield. So what can I do?” and so it’s put your head down, work hard, try to identify your weaknesses, and then shore those up.

And you’re doing this always in the context of a community as well. So you have your social elements, you have your reputation, you have “Oh you beat who, and who beat you? What?” And you have all this… It’s kind of like a lion cub fighting with his brother. I feel like that’s what all of us duelists are. Like we’re just out there wrestling, always trying to jockey for first position.

And we do it for glory. I mean there’s no, we’re not getting paid, we do it for passion, we do it for the trophy that we raise high when we do happen to get a victory. It’s been a journey of highs and lows, though, let me tell you. There’s been times where I’ve been beaten so bad and so thoroughly that I have to… I hang my head and I go “Do I have what it takes to pick myself back up and step back onto the arena? Because this man is defeating me.” and a lot of times you get to see… You get to dig deep and you get to see parts of yourself that you didn’t know you had. I’ve been pushed to that last thread and just had to hit that one final clutch shot and did it right as the timer expired, and there’s just nothing like that.

• Exit Next Right

Surprisingly, Unreal Tournament 3 was considered to enter the MLG roster as yet another breeding ground for broadcasted competitions, but it is difficult to get a competitive scene going, when not enough people show up to the tournament.

During that time there was someone who went by the name of KillaKC and he used to be a playtester for official MLG settings. And so on that time Gears of War was on the MLG circuit and they were testing out UT3 for Xbox for 1v1. And so they had done a beta tournament, if you will. It was a 64-man tournament, like an actual paid tournament. And so that was record-breaking for UT3 at the time because the Playstation version like I mentioned was dead, the PC version was obviously doing it’s own thing because MLG was like a console gaming organization, let’s just call it that. And so yeah, it was a 64-man duel tournament, it was like a $500 prize, first got $300 second got $200, since it was on Xbox it was peer-to-peer. So I ended up getting second place, my teammate Paul Wiese got first place, and so that didn’t pan out because they wanted the tournament to fill out to 64 players. Unfortunately I thin we only got around 20-something. And so that’s the dreams and hopes of UT3 going to MLG, even if it was like an online circuit died there.

• Phantaci

Where Unreal shined was in the community organised competitive matches on the PC, for which Phantaci eventually became a more than notable figure, despite his troubles in adapting to the Mouse and Keyboard input method!

So to me it sounds like you’ve always been in the organizing scene in some way since console, you hopped over to UT4 right away, how did you get so ingrained in the center of UT4? Because the way I look at it, you’re one of the much more iconic guys around here. Obviously, you’re one of the heads of UT Pugs, how did tha all come to be?

• Kurrgan

Well it almost didn’t, so I made my gaming computer specifically for Unreal Tournament 4, I had to obviously switch peripherals right? So obviously I was used to a controller, and initially I was like maybe I can move with a controller and aim with the mouse, I ruled that out. And so eventually I ended up buying a keypad, it was like a Logitech– was it G something? Anyway, it was a Logitech keypad, and I was terrible, and so I almost quit because I was like, man I can’t– back then I was like, I can’t adapt to keyboard and mouse. Long story short, obviously I have. But I was literally a few games away from quitting because I was just getting demolished. It was almost like, you know, I don’t want to compare it to a traumatic injury, but it’s almost like learning how to to walk again, right? I have all this head knowledge of playing Unreal Tournament for like, 6/7 years and here I am trying to redo it again. Like I said, it’s just trying to walk again using a different input method.

• Phantaci

Even though Unreal Tournament wasn’t the most popular shooter on the market, competitive tournaments were held over ESL and Phantaci would host his own duel tournaments with cash prizes.

The easiest tournaments to organise are 1v1 tournaments. Number one, because I’m a dueler myself I kind of have my ear to the ground, my finger on the pulse. I duel all the time, so I kind of understand what to expect. I won’t necessarily be the best person to host an assault tournament, if you ask me to host a 1v1 tournament no problem. And so I’ve been hosting 1v1 tournaments for UT4 since the days of ESL. So before this game was kind of, “cancelled” ESL used to run tournaments for UT4. When ESL tournaments weren’t going on, I would host a random event like, hey, guys, let’s have a Monday night tournament. And so we would do like random eight-man tournaments, random 16-man tournaments, we’d host it on challonge.com and just kind of go from there, right?

And so that’s kind of how I got started ever since then. And then later into the game, I would say around 2018, we started getting some community members that were interested in donating to bigger cash pools for tournaments. And so we started hosting those on challonge.com, we’d get streamers, try to make it look as professional as possible with a crew of volunteers. But you know, I would just host more and more duel tournaments. And so you know we’d have, you know, your regular free-for-all duel tournament where anybody can enter or we’d have a duel tournament that we would call like a tier 2 tournament where like, anyone that’s placed top 5 or top 8 in the regular tournament couldn’t enter. And that way you kind of encourage new talent to kind of, you know, participate right? And so that’s that kind of worked out.

• Phantaci

Despite all the ambiguity in the world, the community somehow prevailed! The game being abandonware did not make the Unreal Tournament Editor any less effective for modding and it also did not stop the community from hosting their own servers and even tournaments!

Beyond the tournaments the players got more and more crafty, developing various kinds of modifications like mutators for instance to enhance the player experience, which is something that not only is true for Unreal Tournament 4, but for the wider Unreal community at large.

What I have to remember is that, you know, Unreal Tournament is, has always been a platform, right? As much as it’s a game it’s also a platform. So you have people who are making, would make crazy mutators to adjust all of this stuff, right? And I’m reminded of this by going back and playing Unreal Tournament 2004, where right out of the box there’s like 4 or 5 mutators that are like “Play it like it’s Unreal Tournament 2003”, “Play it like it’s Unreal Tournament 99”, like, you know, they change the movement, they change the weapon functionality… So you know, again, it’s unfortunately, it’s a life, it’s a life we’ll never see, but it could have had a life where further mutators, options and adjustments based on a server by server basis could have basically made it a platform, the ultimate platform for playing Unreal Tournament.

• Nick Burns

You look at all the different things that the community has brought in that are not part of the original game, such as our stats database. So at any point in time when I’m playing the game I can bring up an analysis of everything, how many jumps I did, how many moves I did, what weapon I used, what the accuracies were for that weapon. And then I can even extrapolate that out based on my opponent. So how do I play against this guy? And so you can analyse that and then the replay system that was built into the game was phenomenal, it was actually going to be like an e-sports replay system, you had different camera angles, different information you could do, and you could watch yourself back.

• Exit Next Right

I would say as like for the community, the thing I’m most proud of would probably be UT4stats.com. Honestly I couldn’t have done that by myself, there’s a developer out in France, I want to say his name is Chitui, he also created the Bunny Tracks game mod. But you know, that’s Chitui made a plugin that allowed us to do web transactions basically, well in the Unreal Tournament editor, because we have an old version of the Unreal Tournament editor. Because when development stopped were were left on what, 4.15?

So anyhow, using that plugin that Chitui created, I ended up making a mutator that allowed, you know, piles and servers to kind of send stats to a centralized database, and so now I mean, I made that one in 2018 or 2019, I’d have to check. But you know, it’s collected over half a million games since then. And so that’s one of the things I’d say I’d be most proud of in terms of like, what I’ve contributed to the community.

• Phantaci

And a lot of people have issues with the visual design, you know some of these, the weapons and things in the game. What many people may not notice because they don’t dive into the settings is that in the weapon settings they actually have a weapon skins button that just never was used. You know, and maybe it’s possible to have bought some kind of microtransaction, maybe that would’ve kept it, I don’t know. But you can imagine a world where if you don’t like the way that the big red rocket launcher looks in Unreal Tournament 4 you could, you know, have a model that looks like the UT 2004 triple barrel or a version that’s sort of like it looks a bit like the Unreal Tournament 99 rocket launcher, maybe the old 8-ball with the 6 barrels from Unreal Gold, you know, like there’s a great oppurtunity to have all these different customizations in there to really make it an experience everyone would want, to allow them to balance it how they see fit.

• Nick Burns

I also created a mutator known as UT+, which is kind of like a game balance mutator. You know, that has its fans and it has its people that prefer other modes but you know it’s another thing I’m proud of in the sense that some of the customisation I allowed for the game, you know you can change the color of your shot course, change the color of your shot combos, change the color of your Link Gun. And at one point, you know, I allowed players to kind of like reskin their Sniper Rifle and have a Lightning Rifle instead, so things like that, those are things I’m proud of because you know, when I stepped onto the scene I had never touched an Unreal Engine, I had never touched an Unreal Tournament editor. So there’s, you know through trial and error I was able to kind of learn that and just contribute as much as I could kind of thing.

• Phantaci

Mutators were also prominently used to counteract the less popular alterations Epic have committed to, like for instance disabling the ability to turn viewmodels off entirely, which for the most competitive of players was a significant problem.

Timiimit’s contributions

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One thing some players wanted to get rid of was the dependency on the Epic Games Launcher, and someone even managed to eventually circumvent the need for the Launcher completely. Timiimit developed UT4UU, or “Unreal Tournament 4 Unofficial Update” which brought various quality of life improvements to the game and a few additional features.

The catalyst for this mod idea was when timiimit’s friend who he played bunny track maps with wondered if a player could bind more than just two taunts to their keyboard, which inspired him to start work on something. At first UT4UU was supposed to be strictly for quality of life changes, but eventually it mutated into a more complex modification which significantly changed the game, in favour for pro players who had specific needs which a casual player didn’t, especially the want for a more minimalistic and readable experience. What would be a great utility for almost every player out there however, would be the unlocking of various items that became unobtainable. UT4UU got you covered!

UT4UU initially was just a game hack, but after gaining access to the source code and managing to compile modifications, timiimit set out to rewrite the hack into a plugin, which would expand its usefulness even further, giving players the ability to even modify UI elements which was previously deemed implausible to attain and he even had the ability to fix the broken friend list the game had since 2021.

When the bad news hit, timiimit was just working on UT4UU and his studies, but quickly shifted to developing a masterserver replacement in order to ensure that Unreal Tournament 4 remained playable. When he first heard of the news he was initially confused and pondered on the viability of a master server replacement and if players were really willing to use an alternative method of logging in, but eventually he decided to start development.

Developing the master server took some time and help from various contributors, and despite there being some challenges in the way, developing the server was a bit easier than expected, in part due to data traffic still coming from the servers during development, and also in part due to the availability of the game’s source code.

The full interview with timiimit that goes into the technical nitty gritty can be downloaded as a PDF via this link or viewed here in article form!

If you want to support this master server project, there is one way to directly help out: Download Unreal Tournament 4, create an account at ut4.timiimit.com and begin playing Unreal Tournament!

What the fuck are Hubs?

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Of course asking people to start playing a game that was abandoned by its developers might seem like a huge ask, but when looking at player statistics and just how server hosting works in this game, you might reconsider this presumption fast. While the Quickplay mode doesn’t exist anymore -at least at this moment it doesn’t- multiple Hub servers exist which any player can make use of!

A hub isn’t just a normal dedicated server in which a single game takes place, it rather is an environment that can host a multitude of games created by different people. These hubs can have plenty of modifications installed and a variety of maps, allowing a player to experience different game modes with different modifications which may or may not change how the game is played.

Don’t like the rocket launcher missing its grenade function? On one Hub I played, this feature was reintroduced. Sometimes weapons can also look or be animated differently, or even have modified attributes. Players host a wide range of games, some more competitive than others. If you really want to test your skills, join an elimination lobby.

Elimination is a team based deathmatch mode in which every player only gets one life and it is one of the most demanding modes out there… The same could be said about Duel, in which two players duke it out one versus one. In case you are wondering, the new master server actually supports a friend list feature, so players can add each other no problem!

Another team based mode I always was quite fond of is Blitz or MegaBlitz, an attack versus defence gamemode in which one team has to deliver their flag to the enemy base. This mode really brings out the esport potential Unreal Tournament 4 possesses, as it not only is about deathmatching, but also about strategy to some extent.

The defenders have limited lives and the odds are stacked in the attackers favour. The goal for the defenders isn’t necessarily to completely stop the attackers from ever delivering their flag to the base, the mode is rather centred around making the attackers lifes miserable by retarding the flag delivery as much as possible, as the attacker and defender roles will be reversed every round.

The scoring is also rather unique for this gamemode. Instead of relying on plain whole number points per match won, the game rather rewards a team a set number of stars based on how quickly the flag was delivered. A team can earn up to 3 stars if delivering the flag fast enough and the remaining time is added on top of the score as a bonus. A competition can be won in just a few rounds if it is a stomp, or it can result in a war of attrition if the teams are somewhat equally skilled, this is an exciting mode you really should give a try!

But what if you want to have a more casual experience? I personally always come back to the classic Deathmatch. One map, a bunch of players and a deadly arsenal scattered throughout- All you need for some good hours of fun! And better yet, there are no teams so every man or woman fights for themselves!

One thing I have come to notice however, is that Capture the Flag is seldom played. But don’t you worry! You can just host a match yourself! While you may not own your own dedicated server, Hubs allow you to create games that other players can join, and creating a lobby really is “as easy as one two three”. Bots or no bots, CTF or Blitz, Instagib or not, the choice is yours and other interested people will follow! So really, there is no reason why you shouldn’t give Unreal Tournament a try!

Knowing what Hubs are and how they work now is great, but you may also want to know who hosts them. The Hubs have been created and are maintained by the most dedicated players in the community, and there is quite a selection! Unreal Battles, UnrealPUGs, Phoenix Germany, Unreal Carnage and more, Unreal is and always was powered by the players. These Hubs also existed before the game was shut down, but the entire community essentially was able to make the switch to timiimit’s master server alternative.

I have been playing on a multitude of Hubs and even though I am a European player, Unreal Carnage has cemented itself as a clear favourite for me as many killer Deathmatch games take place there. On the European Hubs you can never go wrong with some Blitz and Elimination is often played by both the American and European scenes. Every Hub also has community Discord servers one can freely join and while the community is filled with players who most definitely are more experienced than you, don’t be afraid to come by and say hi! If you want to play, feel free to download Unreal Tournament through Google Drive or via a Torrent and feel free to represent Dead Game Review by setting a “DGR” clan tag. Hope to see you in game!

The Future - UnDead Unreal

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So… What happens now?

Not only Unreal Tournament 4, but rather the entire series is facing an existential nightmare. The games are unlisted, and if you own them, online play is made more difficult and while many expressed their discontent over the burial of Unreal, not many actually step up to the task of playing the games to keep them alive for longer. One thing that many viewers have previously pointed out, is that the title of this series, “Dead Game Review” is oxymoronic or even completely inaccurate, which for most of the games covered so far is a correct assessment.

While the title of this series may be provocative, its purpose is to inspire more interest in the players for games that they would have deemed not worth getting into. Past shutdown, I was able to play Unreal Tournament 4 any day I wanted to, and don’t forget that the older games in the series are still playable and most of them are still playable online to varying degrees. What Epic have created with the shutdown of Unreal as a franchise, is a collection of “Zombies”, games that have been buried but which just refuse to die. Unreal still is in trouble, it is harder to attract new players, especially in some of the older Unreal titles like 2004 which doesn’t have a functioning server browser anymore, so random players join far less frequently.

We have to be real, Unreal is stagnating. But I believe that we can resist that stagnation. Unreal Tournament will always represent the Apex of competition. It not only represents endeavours to achieve victory, it also inspires self reflection and a will to improve oneself.

There have been times on the battlefield where I have bumped into other players, so to speak, in a way that I came across very… Not holistic, not honoring of who they are. And so being a very team-based game, and right now I’m referring to the 5v5 capture the flag mode, where we will log on, there’s 10 people in the server and both teams are trying to accomplish the goal of capturing the opponent’s flag. To do that, you end up interacting with these gentlemen, and you find out a lot about yourself through that context of social interaction.

There may be a social stigma out there that says “Oh, the video gamer just sits in his mom’s basement, he’s alone down there, he’s just basically having no life.” but I would argue that video gamers are some of the most social people you’re going to encounter. It’s just that our social interactions occur mainly on and around Unreal Tournament. And so one thing that really changed me was I had this very violent streak. One of my really good friends on the video game, someone that I look up to, someone that is top two in the world in his particular role in this video game, he, one night, I can still remember it, man, because everyone else had written me off at this point. I had a meltdown in the middle of a tournament and he didn’t write me off. He reacted out in kindness and he DM’d me, which led to a call that lasted no more than 10 minutes. But it was what he said to me on that call that made me realize that he does want me here and he does care for me and that I’ve got to lay down my sword, so to speak, and realize that we’re all in this battle together.

What’s really interesting is from that very day that that occured, I have not had extreme outbursts like I had before that day. And so before that day I would often get clipped on stream of doing outrageous things and saying outrageous things, but not after, and it’s because I realized that I belong here and that it’s okay. I don’t need to be toxic, I can just enjoy the game.

• Exit Next Right

Unreal Tournament also became a tool that lends itself to people’s refinement of one’s artistic and technical prowess, having touched the hearts of bedroom producers, fledgling level designers, CG artists and programmers all around the globe.

UT3 came out, I had very little interest in it. It aesthetically didn’t appeal to me and the editor at the time was, I found hard to use for one reason or another. Again, I had now muddied my area of expertise by… I was playing around in the Doom 3 engine, I was playing around in the Sage engine, I was playing around in Source, I was even dabbling in Unity, I was doing all kinds of different stuff so my patience for relearning another engine again sort of waned.

But then I got into university, Unreal Tournament 4 was announced alongside Unreal Engine 4 when it was a subscription and I was like, this looks fun and cool. And Unreal Engine 4 looks user friendly, which is funny by today’s standards because if you look at the interface it looks dated as hell, but I was like oh great I’m going to jump on this bandwagon now that I have the skills and I’m in school for this, I’m in school for media and design so this will be the thing that I can do.

• Nick Burns

One of the things I loved about Unreal Tournament when I started finally figuring out out the Unreal Tournament editor is that one of the things I always liked, I played Quake Champions when it released, I think Quake Champions came out in 2017, right when UT4 development was paused, but when Quake Champions came out they had weapon skins, right? And so I was like, man, I like weapon skins, so I ended up making at the time a weapon skins mutator and it wasn’t my greatest work, and I was still learning the editor, but over time I kind of iterated over it and the latest version I haven’t touched in so long but trust me when I say so it’s a lot better than the initial version. But just things like that, like, I saw a need. If I’m playing another game and I say, hey I wish I had this skin, like that’s too bad, now I gotta pay for it? Or I wait for that… You know, I pay for it, I earn it somehow. But like, with this game, with Unreal Tournament, you can just make a mutator and say, I wanted this? Alright now I have it.

• Phantaci

And not to forget, Unreal Tournament means community, bringing with it the many grudges and rivalries, long lasting friendships, year long personal competitions to become the best there ever was, artistic collaborations and even projects such as the one you are watching right now.

Huge thanks to Kurrgan for taking the time to interview subjects, connecting me with people and the Unreal Community at large and offering support all throughout this production.

Thank you Nick for sharing your personal history with Unreal with me and the world. Your love letter to Unreal video acted like a catalyst to this production and it certainly wouldn’t have happened the way it did without your involvement!

Timiimit, I think I am speaking for the entire community for this one, thank you so much for sacrificing so much of your time and resources to ensure that everyone gets to enjoy Unreal Tournament 4 past shutdown and for having taken the time to chat about your work on the master server replacement!

And finally I want to extend my gratitude to Phantaci and Exit Next Right for giving me tons of insight for this production and for allowing me to use clips from your interviews. Too bad I could not be present during your interviews with Kurrgan, but I hope to encounter you guys in game soon enough, even though that would be a definite death sentence for me!

In the end, Unreal is not quite dead yet and I believe that this project is only further evidence of that fact. Unreal only dies if the player base does, and the guys who are still playing past shutdown, don’t seem to be willing to hang up their Shock Rifles just yet. Download Unreal Tournament now and join the fight, it costs you nothing and you may just end up loving it!

Timiimit Interview (open in new tab to download!)

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Changelog

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• Edit 1 - 09/04/25 - Added interview quotes, links, embeds, changed some lines to accomodate the article format, editor’s note regarding UT3X, and other misc formatting changes
• Edit 2 - 11/04/24 - Replaced dead link for Timiimit interview (Discord) with active one (Google Drive) and added article version link
• Edit 3 - 15/04/25 - Embedded Timiimit Interview to the end of the article (open in new tab to download)