When was the last time you heard about 2014’s Unreal Tournament? Probably not anytime recently and, as it turns out, there’s good reason for that.
Speaking to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeny, Variety asked about how Fortnite’s success may have affected the company’s older projects. He answered with the following: “Unreal Tournament remains available in the store but isn’t actively developed.”. This doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise, as only a few months ago, the title’s Community Manager explained that the Unreal Tournament team had been moved to work on Fortnite.
The latest installment in the Unreal Tournament series became available for crowdsourced development back in 2014 but hasn’t seen any updates since the summer of 2017. Meanwhile, Fortnite’s popularity exploded with the release of its Battle Royale mode, going on to be what’s, arguably, the biggest game on the planet at the moment.
Unreal Tournament 2014 isn’t alone in being overshadowed by Fortnite, either. Paragon, Epic Games’ free-to-play 3rd-person MOBA, was shut down earlier this year as well.
While it puts its resources and manpower into its Battle Royale gold mine, Epic Games has also announced its intention to launch its own digital storefront.The Epic Games Store will give 88% of revenue to the developer, which could just be enough to draw devs towards it. While it’s definitely good to hear Unreal Tournament didn’t share Paragon’s fate, chances are it’ll be a good while before development resumes, as Epic Games focuses its attention elsewhere.
