translation of this report about these closings (with deepl):
https://www.msn.com/es-es/entretenimien ... b46289e77c
The news that Epic Games' Unreal games are shutting down is very sad. But it's even sadder what this means for the series.
Last Wednesday I was writing the news that Epic Games plans to shut down the servers for a multitude of titles they own, including several games in the Unreal series. As a fan of the series, it came as a bit of a shock.
In 2014, Epic released Unreal Tournament, popularly known as "Unreal Tournament 4" by fans. The idea was that it would be a PC-exclusive title where the community itself would choose the direction to take by creating a lot of custom content in the form of maps, mods and so on. In 2018 Epic announced that it was discontinuing support for this project indefinitely in the face of Fortnite's growing success. And now, in 2022, Epic announces that the project is cancelled altogether, and was removed without notice from the Epic Games Store. Putting all the facts on the table, it doesn't seem unreasonable to say that Fortnite has killed the Unreal saga. And this has several readings.
epic games unreal tournament closing servers opinion review
Unreal Tournament (2014) | Epic Games
The first is that Epic Games seems to care little about its legacy. They are willing to unceremoniously bury the titles that launched them to stardom. It's not for nothing that the Unreal Engine is named after Unreal, the first game in the eponymous series.
Dave Oshry of New Blood Interactive tweeted - half jokingly, half seriously, I understand - the following when the news broke: "rename the engine to Fortnite Engine, you cowards". And I couldn't agree with this more.
In all fairness, plans have been revealed to bring back Unreal Tournament 3 as a free-to-play rebranded Unreal Tournament 3 X. But it's not enough; the most recent full title in the series is also the worst rated on Metacritic. With a more than respectable 83 out of 100, yes, but far from the 93 out of 100 that Unreal Tournament 2004 got back in the day.
epic games unreal tournament closing servers opinion review
Unreal Tournament 3 is the worst rated of the Unreal Tournament sub-series on Metacritic
You only have to read the comments from many users on Twitter on the Unreal Tournament account post to see that the dissatisfaction is widespread. Not only is multiplayer being removed from the Unreal games, but, to add salt to the wound, there are plans to rescue the most recent release, yes, but also the worst. And although this is a different matter, I'll mention that the fact that UT3 was also released on consoles (PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360) affected the final version very negatively, with announced features such as destruction of the scenarios that were never added.
I understand the reasoning behind ending the service on games that are 20 years old and whose player community is miniscule today: to eliminate "superfluous" expenses. Or rather, I could understand it in a much more modest company, but it is incomprehensible that these closures are intended as a cost-cutting measure in a company valued at $31.5 billion in April 2022. There is plenty of money not only to keep the servers open, but to be able to develop new releases and give them more than decent support. What there may not be is the will.
There is money [...] What maybe there isn't is the will.
And it's even more incomprehensible to see that even at the gates of 2023 there is still no trace of the Unreal series games in the Epic Games Store. The only way to acquire them legally today is on GOG, as the games were removed from Steam without warning.
They say comparisons are odious, yes, but let's take a look at Valve and Steam: their shop was born as a kind of annoying application that you had to install on your PC to play Half-Life 2. Or to put it another way: their own games have been on their digital marketplace since its launch. Epic Games, on the other hand, has not taken the same care to look after one of its most emblematic sagas.
epic games unreal tournament server shutdown opinion review
Unreal Tournament (2014) | Epic Games
In short: Epic Games is making it difficult to play some of its own games, and this only fuels the debate of preservation and physical versus digital games. If the game development companies themselves are not able to keep their own games alive, who is responsible?
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And they think with this patch (leaving alive only ut3 but rename as X and still without any idea about what changes will they do on that game, i hope they get rid of those gow aesthetics and blurring image very hard to see and play... ) players will stay happy, I doubt highly