Epic kills Online service for all Unreal Tournament games next month :(

[kinker31]

For anyone playing the original Unreal or UT '99, I've actually got some good news:

Unreal (Tourney 99) still has community servers (seen here!), and those seem to work much better than Epic Games' Servers.

 

Edit: Oh, and Unreal Gold, Unreal 2, and UT '99 are still available on GoG, at least for now.

 

[indigotyrian]

3 hours ago, Murdoch said:

It's the risk you take getting into an online game. You cannot expect them to work forever. Servers cost money to run, and businesses like to make money. Fans and businesses have opposing takes on these things but ultimately the money is going to win out in the end. If the cost/benefit shrinks to the point of unfeasibility, the plug is going to get pulled. I may not like it, but I can understand the reasoning from a business perspective. 23 years is a hell of a run for an online game in UT's case. Given the hackers and coders of the Internet have made it so I can still play 30+ year old arcade and console games if I feel so inclined, I feel there's a good chance someone will create a workaround.

 

 

Running and maintaining servers costs money. They mention in the article they are wanting to streamline maintenance by not having to maintain multiple online systems. They would have run the numbers and compared it to the number of copies of the game they are still selling and decided it's not worth it.

 

 

I think it's pretty safe to say that anyone likely to want a copy of these old games already has one.
 

Edit: hmm interesting to note they are going to bring back UT3 at a later date. That game tanked hard here in New Zealand and Australia and most people went back to UT2004.

 

Have you considered that A) releasing the software to run the master servers themselves (even under a "no support at all, good fuckin luck lmao" offer) would cost Epic literally zero dollars and earn them a lot of goodwill, B) that player-operated master servers absolutely exist (see Jazz Jackrabbit 2 for an Epic example, or fuck just look at the *goddamn Doom community*, and that C) removing these games from sale and operation is akin to historical erasure?

 

Fuck Timmy Tencent and fuck this bootlicking nonsense.

[Murdoch]

16 minutes ago, segfault said:

 

Have you considered that A) releasing the software to run the master servers themselves (even under a "no support at all, good fuckin luck lmao" offer) would cost Epic literally zero dollars and earn them a lot of goodwill, B) that player-operated master servers absolutely exist (see Jazz Jackrabbit 2 for an Epic example, or fuck just look at the *goddamn Doom community*, and that C) removing these games from sale and operation is akin to historical erasure?

 

Fuck Timmy Tencent and fuck this bootlicking nonsense.

 

Bootlicking nonsense?!? Fuck you and learn to read. I have said TWICE now I DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS! All I said was I understand it from a PURE. BUSINESS. PERSPECTIVE. What is so difficult about that to comprehend?

 

I fully 100% support any and all efforts to continue to maintain historic games including releasing code and/or software to enable the community to take over. I never said I didn't. You and @magicsofa apparently drew that conclusion because... reasons.

 

58 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

Removing Tournament makes sense since the servers are gone, so there's no point selling people a dead game. But why the fuck did they remove Unreal and Unreal 2? They're single player games! There's no servers to maintain and people will still pay for and play them! You don't throw the baby out with the bath water, Epic, what're you doing?!

 

100% agreed. They should simply add "online functionality is no longer available from the publisher but single player and local multiplayer is still functional".

Edited December 15, 2022 by Murdoch

[Murdoch]

1 hour ago, The BMFG said:

this is so fucking scummy. really what do they gain from removing all the unreal games from steam? fucking nothing from what i can tell

 

They obviously think adding an "online services no longer available" disclaimer is too much effort.

 

1 hour ago, TasAcri said:

Now imagine when streaming becomes the standard and local game files are no more.

 

Streaming is a corporate fantasy that no one with any modicum of knowledge of how the Internet works should take seriously. Shy of a miraculous and massive turnaround in the quality of Internet performance worldwide, streaming will never make the money necessary to support usable game streaming on a wide scale long term. Stadia's implosion is evidence enough of what a folly it is. There might be a few idiots willing to tolerate the sub-par performance it brings, but most won't and simply either won't buy into it or they will take their money elsewhere.

[Biodegradable]

The gaming industry's continued disinterest in preserving its own history is unbelievably frustrating.

[indigotyrian]

27 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

 

Bootlicking nonsense?!? Fuck you and learn to read. I have said TWICE now I DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS! All I said was I understand it from a PURE. BUSINESS. PERSPECTIVE. What is so difficult about that to comprehend?

 

I fully 100% support any and all efforts to continue to maintain historic games including releasing code and/or software to enable the community to take over. I never said I didn't. You and @magicsofa apparently drew that conclusion because... reasons.

 

 

100% agreed. They should simply add "online functionality is no longer available from the publisher but single player and local multiplayer is still functional".

 

hey buddy i'm seeing someone saying "weelllllll aaaaaactually it costs epic the equivalent of the change under their sofa to keep the lights on for these games, so it makes total sense that they'd pull the plug and not give the community the means to do so", all i'm doing is identifying what's in front of me. you've spun more yarn defending their decision than you have condemning it.

[IntellectualHomie]

A shame indeed, luckily GOG still has the games up. Hopefully they don't take them down anytime soon.

I imagine some users getting around the server shutdown with Hamachi or straight up getting their own servers going 

[Murdoch]

7 minutes ago, segfault said:

 

hey buddy i'm seeing someone saying "weelllllll aaaaaactually it costs epic the equivalent of the change under their sofa to keep the lights on for these games, so it makes total sense that they'd pull the plug and not give the community the means to do so", all i'm doing is identifying what's in front of me. you've spun more yarn defending their decision than you have condemning it.

 

You seem completely unable to differentiate between understanding something and agreeing with it. The two are NOT synonymous. You are completely lying about what I said to start shit. Pick a fight with someone else. I am done with you.

[magicsofa]

36 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

I have said TWICE now I DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS! All I said was I understand it from a PURE. BUSINESS. PERSPECTIVE. What is so difficult about that to comprehend?

 

It isn't hard to understand why a business would want to herd their customers to new products. The part that is hard to understand is why you're parading around with that knowledge. It's like we're saying, "Hey that lava is dangerous" and you reply with "I want to die in the lava BUT I UNDERSTAND WHY IT WOULD HAPPEN"

[TasAcri]

30 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

Streaming is a corporate fantasy that no one with any modicum of knowledge of how the Internet works should take seriously. Shy of a miraculous and massive turnaround in the quality of Internet performance worldwide, streaming will never make the money necessary to support usable game streaming on a wide scale long term. Stadia's implosion is evidence enough of what a folly it is. There might be a few idiots willing to tolerate the sub-par performance it brings, but most won't and simply either won't buy into it or they will take their money elsewhere.

 

I really want to believe that. I wish you end up being right. But this is no corporate fantasy. It's a corporate wet dream. It's every publisher's end game. And they will try anything to make it happen. I doubt they will care about the actual quality of the service, those standards drop all the time. For instance, nowadays we generally have way more input lag in our games VS the CRT days, not to mention the dreaded LCD motion blur. But we accepted it because there were some benefits as well, we have bigger TVs now and higher resolutions.

 

So maybe they will sell streaming as having a lot of benefits for you. Like how you won't need to buy or preserve any local hardware and how it's more convenient for you. I mean, we have lost so much for our convenience. Digital online stores like Steam, etc, became the standard and killed physical and second hand game sales with their DRM just because we liked the convenience of not getting our ass off the couch to go to a store, or not having a bunch of games taking space in our shelves. That's it. Humans are lazy and more convenience will also be the selling point that will make the mainstream accept streaming as the standard. I bet my ass that not only it will happen but it will happen sooner than we expect.

 

Stadia was too early and too experimental. Plus, the others were still selling local code so we had those better options. But what happens if everyone starts doing it? Quitting videogames and finding another hobby is another option i suppose...

[Murdoch]

14 minutes ago, magicsofa said:

 

It isn't hard to understand why a business would want to herd their customers to new products. The part that is hard to understand is why you're parading around with that knowledge. It's like we're saying, "Hey that lava is dangerous" and you reply with "I want to die in the lava BUT I UNDERSTAND WHY IT WOULD HAPPEN"

 

It's like everything I am saying in very plain English is completely lost on you because you're putting it through the filter of your pre-conceived notions instead of actually listening to what I am saying and why I was saying it. The various UTs have been out for at minimum around 15 years, with UT being nearly . Fornite is 5 years old and still making boatloads of money while UT is making next to none. If your hypothesis is correct then 1) why did they not do it sooner? and 2) why are they still willing to take the time to update UT3 out of their own pocket to basically no financial gain?

 

And as I said, even if it was, it's not going to work. People playing a 15+ year old arena shooter is not going to suddenly going to want to play a completely different style of game. I would say there's no one stupid enough to believe they can force it to happen, but well, I would likely be wrong about that. So while I personally think this is unlikely their sole motivation for this decision, I am not going to say definitively it wasn't. But this has nothing to do with any of the points I raised whatsoever. YOU are forcing that on me, picking a fight just like segfault was. All I said was I understood from a business perspective why they did it, and I disagreed with it. Your analogy is incorrect. Learn to tell the difference when someone says they understand something versus saying they support something. They are not the same thing.

[Herr Dethnout]

2 hours ago, The BMFG said:

this is so fucking scummy. really what do they gain from removing all the unreal games from steam?

 

“What the hell is a Unreal? Is a type of Fornite?”

 

-CEO Of Epic Games

[Murdoch]

17 minutes ago, TasAcri said:

I really want to believe that. I wish you end up being right. But this is no corporate fantasy. It's a corporate wet dream. It's every publisher's end game. And they will try anything to make it happen. I doubt they will care about the actual quality of the service, those standards drop all the time.

 

They will fail, sooner or later. There is no possible way, with the Internet as it stands, to make streaming a viable business model. Even the biggest company in the world can't and won't throw money at something forever if they are not getting returns.

[indigotyrian]

34 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

The gaming industry's continued disinterest in preserving its own history is unbelievably frustrating.

 

Preservation is not a singular act, it is a state of mind, a constant set of actions people must take. In the form of media it includes vigorous sharing and distribution as well as active efforts to reverse-engineer and rebuild playback systems.

 

Keep Circulating The Tapes. It's Always Morally Correct.

[Biodegradable]

2 minutes ago, segfault said:

Preservation is not a singular act, it is a state of mind, a constant set of actions people must take. In the form of media it includes vigorous sharing and distribution as well as active efforts to reverse-engineer and rebuild playback systems.

 

Most assuredly. It just sucks dick when it's left to enterprising fans to do all the archiving and reverse-engineering to keep old games alive and then risk get slapped with Cease & Desist orders; being punished for caring. It's why I worry about your own Duke2001 project, Seg. We in the Doom community enjoy an exception in this regard, rather than what should ideally be a norm. Unfortunately, the industry is only driven by money and thinks people don't care about old games.

[Murdoch]

2 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

Unfortunately, the industry is only driven by money and thinks people don't care about old games.

 

I think who exactly cares about old games will vary from person to person. Some people just drift to the next big thing. Some might harbour fond memories of one or more old games, but feel no desire to return to it. Then you have people like us, still playing a 30 year old FPS and me, building my own arcade machine to play similarly old arcade games. History is important, and should definitely be preserved.

[Blzut3]

The delisting of the games is definitely a bizarre move.  Especially for Unreal Gold and Unreal 2 which are primarily single player games, but even if there wasn't an alternative solution to the master server, users can run their own Tournament servers so everything still more or less works fine outside of the in game server list (unless I'm forgetting something).  I never had the skills to do anything but get creamed online, but UT2004 is always a go to for me at lan parties.  Thus I've never cared about public servers.

[Denim Destroyer]

Thankfully Epic once had a friendly relationship with the Unreal community and provided the master list code to a few community members who have maintained their own master server via the Old Unreal series of patches. Sadly the other Unreal Tournament games are not as well supported in this front so expect issues in the future until some workaround is developed.

[Mr. Freeze]

Certifiably not epic 

[Obsidian Plague]

What's the point? Why take the servers down for a series people still actively play?

[Nevander]

5 hours ago, Artman2004 said:

The Unreal games (even Gold, a singleplayer game) have become unbuyable on Steam. A damn shame.

What the fuck?? It's official, EPIC Games is now an epic piece of shit. What happened to them honestly? Why are they so afraid to touch Unreal? It's like they are disowning their own roots. That's messed up.

[HorseJockey]

The fact that they already delisted them is just unreal...

[slugger]

"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."

 

 

They're doing this because the old servers don't work with their new system. They had some end date to either make old stuff compatible or cease support. I suspect they plan to rerelease the series in 2028 (30 year anniversary) and ask you to buy it again. Making code public screws up that plan, but even if they don't intend to update it, they won't give up company property for $0. Goodwill means nothing to these weasels.

[THEBaratusII]

I can sort of understand the reasoning behind shutting down the master servers (there's alternative master servers you can use for Unreal/UT) but it really doesn't justify delisting the entire series off of Steam. (The GOG releases are still around iirc but for how long is the question?)

 

A shame that UT4 didn't have a chance either, they could've let the community finish it, but they care too much on milking Fortnite to death.

 

[Kinsie]

The OldUnreal patches for Unreal 1 and UT99 include the config file tweaks to enable access to community-run master servers.

 

Supposedly, the people who run those master servers are looking into something for UT2004, but it might take a little while because they don't want to piss Epic off in the process. Fingers crossed...

 

Unreal 2 XMP has its own community-run master server solution.

 

Hopefully this should ensure business as usual for people who already own these games. For the people who don't have them but want to play? Well... I'm sure they'll figure something out, if you catch my drift...

[Lila Feuer]

Oh cool, I didn't grab the games on Steam yet because they never go on sale (should've figured that wasn't a good sign) and now they're gone. Imagine that, scrubbing the very thing your engine was named after, 24 years later. I hope an outrage gets sparked to put the titles back up, that literally does nothing but hurt history and archival purposes. There's plenty of games on the market with no working multiplayer because the servers were shut down ages ago, you're just killing the single player and possibly entire single player mapping scenes and modding communities as a result of it.

[Edward850]

I guess in the end, Quake did win.

[Liberation]

I can understand them pulling the plug on the servers, but delisting the games is very disappointing.

[NiGHTMARE]

10 hours ago, TasAcri said:

Now imagine when streaming becomes the standard and local game files are no more.

 

Publishers will have the power to make games vanish from existence or appear whenever it suits them. They will have full control of what's playable or not. Even single player games.

 

So good luck to future gamers.

 

This will just result in more indie games being developed, and more players being exposed to them. Which would actually be a good thing!

[heliumlamb]

Not Real. rubbing the Number One Victory Royale in our faces (yeah unreal is 'bout to go down)

third party master servers will exist. but unreal (1998) is a singleplayer game first and foremost? (and a great one at that)

they're still up on gog for now, but this is yet another instance of "entities that that do not want piracy directly encouraging the act of piracy"
but i'm certain a couple of thousand pirated copies of some old shooters ain't gonna make a dent in tim sweeny's daily burger king supply

another +1 for the concept of physical media and it's preservation