End of an era: Epic Games to shut down Unreal Tournament servers in 2023

Old-school Unreal Tournament shooters will be taken offline in January 2023, Epic Games has announced.

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The end of a classic PC gaming era is upon us. Epic Games is removing all Unreal Tournament games from storefronts and plans to turn off online multiplayer servers for games including Unreal Gold, Unreal II: The Awakening, Unreal Tournament (2003), Unreal Tournament (2004), Unreal Tournament III, and the Unreal Tournament Game of the Year Edition. All versions of these games have already been de-listed from Steam and can no longer be found on the Epic Games Store.

Epic says that it is now shifting towards its more unified and cohesive Epic Online Services framework, which requires deprecating older builds of specific titles. Luckily, Epic says it plans to revive Unreal Tournament 3 to utilize its new services network.

Check below for the announcement from Epic:

Starting today, we will begin turning off out-of-date online services and servers for many older games in the Epic family as we move to solely support Epic Online Services with its unified friends system, voice chat features, parental controls, and parental verification features. Most titles will be playable offline, while some will no longer be playable. We apologize to the players affected by these changes.

The following titles will have all online services disabled on January 24, after which players can continue playing single or local multiplayer modes offline:

• 1000 Tiny Claws
• Dance Central 1-3
• Note: Dance Central VR online multiplayer will remain available
• Green Day: Rock Band
• Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess
• Rock Band 1-3
• Note: Rock Band 4 online multiplayer will remain available
• 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 (Note: We have plans to bring back online features via Epic Online Services in the future)
• Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition