Not only is this a really awesome thing for Epic to do, it could have much further-reaching consequences than UT if it's successful.

At the very minimum, it's going to be an excellent source of quality net/graphics code samples for UE4 developers. If it's wildly successful, we may see some neat ripples around the industry.

Also, this thing is going to get Occulus'd, Hydra'd, and everything else. That's going to be fun.

Epic has completely changed this year and doing amazing things like this and the $19 engine access. Living up to their name.

Looks like they are doing the Team Fortress 2 free to play model, even though they say it is free and not free to play, the vanity store/content is the Valve F2P model used in TF2, DotA, probably CS etc. These games are huge because of the community content, Epic is seeing that.

This is such a cool thing to do and only wish they did it many years ago.

Wow, that is a pretty awesome plan. I can really see it paying off hugely for everyone involved. Now you can be part of a game development team without having a task master forcing to work 80 hour weeks, and yet you can still be part of it from the beginning to end. I wish Blizzard would do this for the WoW engine.

> When the game is playable, it will be free. Not free to play, just free.

> We’ll eventually create a marketplace where developers, modders, artists and gamers can give away, buy and sell mods and content. Earnings from the marketplace will be split between the mod/content developer, and Epic. That’s how we plan to pay for the game.

What distinction are they trying to make between "free to play" and "free"? To my understanding, "free to play" means the game is largely free, but with the implication that there is additional content that can optionally be purchased. "Free" means the game is free, with no implication either way of whether optional purchases exist.

It will be tricky to incorporate the fanbase because there's a huge split in UT fans about the high-speed pace of UT2k4 vs. the slower, spammier gameplay of classic UT. UT3 attempted to split the difference and was universally reviled.

Still, this is super-exciting and I hope the best for them. The classic FPS genre has needed this for years.

This is amazing! I remember playing mods like Team Fortress on Quake - things people made just because they enjoyed it. The problem with mods lately is that it takes really passionate people to support them for free, and they're either hard to monetize or monetization isn't even an option (SC). There's still plenty of great UGC, but it's generally not commercial grade - time investment is high, and financial reward is 0.

This model is brilliant!! It could keep people playing for years just by trying out new mods, new content, and more. Really excited to see what happens.

This announcement just sold me on an Unreal Engine 4 subscription[1] if for nothing else than to obtain access to early Unreal Tournament builds. Unreal Tournament is one of my favorite video game series, and I love that it is possible that I will be able to contribute to the development of the latest installment.

[1] https://www.unrealengine.com/register

It's not clear whether this will eventually be licensed under an open source license. Since it doesn't look like they're planning to monetize the game directly then it might seem to make sense to do so.

While folks are building these new mods and such, don't forget to look back to existing UT properties for ideas. Unreal 2 XMP is still one of the best team-based FPS setups I've seen. Sadly, it never recovered after they shut down the directory servers to try to force everyone to switch to Unreal 3.

This will be very interesting to watch. I think I spent more time playing with skyrim mods from steam than playing the original game, which was a new experience for me, since using fan-made game mods was usually more trouble than it was worth in the past. A streamlined "app store" experience can add years of life to a game, and with the massive investments required for AAA titles these days, that has to be good for the publishers, as long as they can capture some of the revenue. It also provides a low friction platform for new game developers and artists to get their content in front of a lot of people who may not be part of the indie/casual game demographic. I really hope this model catches on, it would be a win for everybody.

Nice, but I don't want another UT, I want another Unreal. A true successor to Unreal 1. I did not like Unreal 2, I did not like the characters of it at all. I kinda like a silent protagonist, because it solves the "I don't want to play as that douche" problem.

Glad to see they are building on the brand. UT is the game I play for the longest time. Still playing UT 1999.

I wonder if this plus Oculus will result in a universe like what was described in the novel Ready Player One?

It slightly concerns me that "the community" is going to have a direct say in UT4's development. First, many developers and pundits have said that whenever a community starts to dictate the course of a game, things often go south, since the most vocal members of a community very often don't represent the majority of the playerbase. (I believe TotalBiscuit has pointed to WoW as a great example of this, though I haven't played it myself.) Secondly, I love UT and I've been playing it from the start, but I'm not a hardcore arena shooter player. Advanced techniques like bunny-hopping, strafe-running, and all the crazy stunts described in this thread simply don't interest me. As far as I'm concerned, many of them are glorified bugs and should either be removed entirely, or alternatively made more accessible for new players through tutorials and/or better in-game feedback. (See: skiing in the new Tribes, rocket jumping in TF2, combos in fighting games.) But I reckon that most of the people interested in the project at this early stage are exactly those kinds of advanced players. As a result, I fear that we'll get a game that's too obtuse for the "filthy casuals" (such as myself) who will be required to keep it active in the long run. Contrary to the current zeitgeist, I don't believe it's enough to balance a game around the competitive community in order to make it fun for everyone. Competitive gamers are a niche; people like me, who play for fun with a few friends over a couple of beers, are the mass market.

With that said, I'm really happy to see that there's going to be a UT4, and I'm looking forward to following the development. It's been a while since the last great arena shooter, and I hope we'll be seeing a resurgence sometime soon!

Epic wants to emulate the success of Steam's community marketplace, especially CS:GO portion (some items are fetching north of $400+ dollars).

I'm surprised we haven't heard anything from Valve lately. Epic and Crytek have both released their engines for absurdly cheap rates and been gathering a lot of steam around their platforms. Valve is known for their community interaction and marketplace but haven't released their plans for Source 2 etc. Any ideas?

That said, this is an awesome move by Epic!

Hats. We're going to monetize it with hats.

What codebase are they starting with? How long will it take to develop a tournament quality game? The announcement says a "small team of UT veterans that are beginning work on the project starting today" and that a playable version won't be available for "many months".

Whatever assets Epic releases, we're aiming to adjust them to match UT99 as closely as possible over at www.uTournament.net. We're also going to integrate the game into the web browser!

Free as in freedom (libertas), or free as in free beer (gratis)?

I wonder if one could learn how to program games in C++ by following the progress from the very beginning and persistently try to understand every line.

This is the only on-line game that I played at a seriously high level(ut2k4). It pretty much burned me out on multi-player games but... Dare I ask; will there be TAM? I never really experienced the "dance" of ut2k4 in any other game. Spiritually it could be compared to guntana I suppose. Once you get the muscle memory down it's a complete mind game. 100+bpm mind game. How I miss it :|

I'm waiting for the Github repo. I will definitely track the code. My only wish is that Github had digests instead of email for every issue.

This is the future of game development. I have been saying this for a while to friends. I'm excited to see how this goes.

Epic's model is already so cool, "Here, take our billion dollar tool and make something awesome with it. If it's a success, we'll take a small cut. If not, no sweat.", and now this! I can't even wait. I've waited so long for the next Unreal Tournament... I hope Epic makes billions off of UE4.

Free to play is typically monetized. While they are allowing others to publish paid mods, and profiting from it, they seem to be indicating that they will provide a quality core UT class game, for free, without charging for any of it. Which is pretty awesome.

You're definitely right that the distinction they are making isn't very clear, and they could message that part better.

>What distinction are they trying to make between "free to play" and "free"?

I think the distinction is that Android Platform is "free". The Unreal Tournament Platform is "free".

Both give you usable functionality out of the box, and free. Both give you the opportunity to purchase additional functionality in a "store".

"Free to play" generally means the developer will add more content, or cheats, or whatever to purchase, whereas "free" in this case means they will offer a platform and a store where they will take a cut.

The distinction is that they won't be monetizing Unreal Tournament 'the game'; there won't be gems to purchase, or hats to buy, or whatever else.

They will be providing a marketplace where other people can sell their own content that they create, which is optional and not (necessarily?) integrated into the main game.

The implication of 'free to play' is that the game itself is full of opportunities to monetize players, or that progression can be sped with currency which you can earn/buy, etc, and that the developer will be splitting their time between bugfixes/features and producing new content to sell to people (at varying levels of balance between the two).

The difference here is that the developers are producing two separate things: one, a 3D tournament-style FPS; and two, a shop where people can sell game content that they've created, and make money from it (or presumably give it away for free).

We we're only talking about gameplay effecting purchases (so not skins and what not) I think it's used to draw the distinction between where you can purchase changes to gameplay that take effect in a mixed population of purchasers and non-purchasers (free to play), and where you can buy into access to segregated gameplay populations (free with mod marketplace).

For example, free to play in a FPS could be purchasing weapons that cannot be accessed in other ways. On the other hand, free + mod marketplace could say... imagine for some reason UT4 ships without a certain game mode... say CTF with Vehicles. Some enterprising fellow can now make a mod with CTF with Vehicles, and sell it on the marketplace. Or maybe a game mode where everyone has bow and arrow and a knife. The point is that there is now a 'different' game that you pay to get access to.

Fundamentally, it would be like say... if Half Life multiplayer was free on release, but someone still went and sold Counter Strike anyways.

I guess they are talking about Team Fortress 2 here. In TF2 you are allowed to buy actual weapons and power packs in the marketplace, not just skins for them. You could also get them by playing, but it takes an awful amount of time.

I think this distinction will be largely moved along by the people who contribute to their eventual content marketplace. If there's a ton of interest in commercial mods, then you'll see non-free mods, though the base game itself will be free.

It's very hard to predict how this will shake out right now, though.

I guess it's free in the sense that UT4 is a complete game, you will not need to pay to experience UT4. The extra content is made by the players themselves and can be given away for free or sold.

I think they mean that there won't be "pay-to-win" content.