Free to play is often the term that developers throw around when saying their games will be free, but Unreal Tournament is different. The upcoming multiplayer FPS from Epic Games, which was recently announced, will actually be free and take the community’s help in shaping its direction. Project Lead and Senior Programmer Steve Polge recently spoke to VG247 about the same and said that the project’s direction will involve the community rather than being internally decided.
“We like this model because it’s fundamentally generous. It allows us to succeed by doing the right thing for the community, and it keeps all of us, at Epic and in the community, on the same page with what we are trying to accomplish. The marketplace for Unreal Tournament will be an extension of the Unreal Engine marketplace, which you’ll be able to see taking shape with every update to Unreal Engine 4.
“For the mod community to succeed, we first need to create a successful game that appeals to and sustains a sizable and vibrant community of players. We’ll work with our mod developers to support their development needs with the core game platform and we’ll make sure it’s easy for players to discover the mod experiences available in the UT marketplace.”
Ploge also said that talks are going to offer remuneration for map creators. “We haven’t figured that out yet, but our goal is to provide a model that is attractive and fair for our content creators.”
We’ll eventually find out how Unreal Tournament pans out but we’re interested for sure. Stay tuned for more details.