Epic Games is agitating the community with a new UT announcement

May 5, 2014 12:05 GMT  ·  By

Unreal Tournament is probably one of the most recognizable gaming franchises ever made, and its developers are making a surprise announcement regarding its future. Coupled with the Linux announcement we had a few weeks ago, the Linux users have something to look forward to.

Epic Games is the studio behind Unreal Tournament, Gears of War, and a few other major titles, but they are also making the Unreal Engine, which is a piece of technology that powers countless other titles.

The last time an Unreal Tournament game made it to Linux was back in 2004. The game, called Unreal Tournament 2004 (go figure), made quite an impact on the gaming community and is being played even today.

The vice president of Epic Games and one of the creators of the Unreal Engine left a very cryptic message on Twitter, which got the community all riled up. “I love #UnrealTournament – So excited for the comeback! More next week!”

Another Epic Games representative, Vice President of product development Paul Meegan, also took to Twitter and explained that an Unreal Tournament announcement was on its way. “UE4 Dev Community + Epic. The future of Unreal Tournament. Tune in to Twitch TV Thursday at 2pm ET.”

Epic Games has already announced that Unreal Engine 4 comes with Linux support, so it might not be such a stretch that it might also involve Linux as a launch platform.

On the other hand, only a couple of months ago, Tim Sweeney, one of the co-founders of Epic Games, very clearly said that the studio had no plans to revive the franchise, at least not in the near future. “We have a lot of nostalgia for the game but we're actually not developing anything in the Unreal game universe at all at the moment.”

These statements are mutually exclusive, which means that it might not be what the community is waiting for. For all we know, Epic Games will start a contest for the modding community and reward the ones who make the best port of UT2004 on Unreal Engine 4. It could be a number of other reasons, so users should not get their hopes up.

An Unreal Tournament game for Linux might be exactly what the open source platform needs to become a serious gaming alternative to Windows. Epic Games could be the company to make that happen, but we'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out.

Stay tuned and we'll give you more details after the Epic Games announcement.