Epic Games is de-listing and stopping sales of old Unreal titles

[Rachael]

If you are a fan of retro shooters - or of the Unreal series - you will likely want to know about this, possibly even do something (such as buying a copy) before it's too late.

https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/ne ... lder-games
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/delis ... tion/page1

[Gollgagh]

It is really impressive how every single action that Epic has taken over the past decade has decreased my opinion of them.

[Graf Zahl]

Thanks for reminding me why buying DRM'd content is a fool's proposal.

[sinisterseed]

Thanks for reminding me why buying DRM'd content is a fool's proposal.

Even without DRM, they'd simply stop making physical copies and take them off the market, so I'm hardly seeing the difference here.

But I concur otherwise, everything Epic has done since Fortnite's popularity exploded made them crappier and crappier in my book. This right here is a good example of basically erasing their own history. I guess it's time to say goodbye to Unreal for good, damn sure there won't be any more entries in the series in the future, no matter how far that future is, and they won't sell the IP either. It was cool while it lasted, but this franchise is dead.

[MartinHowe]

For only £5.99 it was a no-brainer to buy Unreal Gold on GoG while it still exists (we have until Friday 2pm UTC), so I just did that General opinion suggests it's OK in WINE and if not, I have a small Windows partition at the end of the hard drive for stuff like that. But, as many have said, DRM games are a symptom of some of the things wrong with the world today I just installed it via WINE and played a few seconds, no problems so far

[Cacodemon345]

I am surprised they even bothered to release Jazz Jackrabbit games on GOG considering those met the exact same fate when the Unreal games exploded in popularity. I can see those getting taken off the stores as well in the future.

Anyone who saw Jazz Jackrabbit 3's development cancelled and didn't buy into the excuse of not finding a publisher wouldn't be surprised either; it's like Epic loves to bury down their old stuff the moment something new from them becomes ultra-popular.

[Kinsie]

Thanks for reminding me why buying DRM'd content is a fool's proposal.

The GOG games are not DRMed (and come in the form of nice, portable installer EXEs perfectly fit for sharing with your closest friends...), and the Epic-endorsed OldUnreal community patches replace the executables with updated, DRM-free ones.

For only £5.99 it was a no-brainer to buy Unreal Gold on GoG while it still exists (we have until Friday 2pm UTC), so I just did that General opinion suggests it's OK in WINE and if not, I have a small Windows partition at the end of the hard drive for stuff like that. But, as many have said, DRM games are a symptom of some of the things wrong with the world today I just installed it via WINE and played a few seconds, no problems so far

The OldUnreal patches for Unreal Gold and UT99 includes native Linux binaries, though for boring legal reasons you'll probably have to use WINE to install them.

[MartinHowe]

The OldUnreal patches for Unreal Gold and UT99 includes native Linux binaries, though for boring legal reasons you'll probably have to use WINE to install them.

Thanks for the heads up about patches, @Kinsie. This is my first foray into Unreal so have much to learn

[sinisterseed]

I am surprised they even bothered to release Jazz Jackrabbit games on GOG considering those met the exact same fate when the Unreal games exploded in popularity. I can see those getting taken off the stores as well in the future.

Anyone who saw Jazz Jackrabbit 3's development cancelled and didn't buy into the excuse of not finding a publisher wouldn't be surprised either; it's like Epic loves to bury down their old stuff the moment something new from them becomes ultra-popular.

Or the cancellation of the new Unreal Tournament game from a few years ago, because it wasn't as big as they had hoped, or an instant hit.

The biggest issue is that they are doing this by replacing historically relevant creations with literal trends, how would it be for other companies like Valve, Rockstar (well, no, wait, they partially did, on Steam) or Rocksteady to pull off similar moves with their famous IPs, especially since some of them still have thriving modding communities? This is basically erasing their own history, and the memory of the games responsible for making them who they are today. I'm dying to see what they do once Fortnite loses its appeal, as it's a given none of these franchises are ever making a comeback.

[Kinsie]

All the Unreal games are 80% off on GOG for their final stand. You've got about eight hours.

[Graf Zahl]

I wouldn't be surprised if these games came back at a later time, with fully featured and upgraded DRM and other shit, and of course incompatible with the old fan patches, Gotta abuse the dumb schmucks who shrugged off DRM when it first appeared and now know no other way to play. No matter what some people have stated here that these games are not DRM "protected", this action would not have happened in a DRM free world.

Of course with the general standing of these games, the ones who will really benefit from this are the pirates. Delisting such iconic titles won't reduce the demand for them.

[dpJudas]

As much as I hate DRM, I don't see how this delisting would be any different in a DRM-free world. Software has always been "licensed", so if the original producer of the software no longer decides to sell licenses (that's what this de-listing really is) then you can't expand the total number of copies any more, legally at least. Only difference here is that the Steam license probably also says you are not allowed to sell it to a third party, but that's not really DRM. Any game could have that in their license. People would just ignore such a line in the license back when software came in a box.

[Graf Zahl]

Considering that these are their most iconic titles, the delisting only makes sense if they have nefarious plans with their own store and stronger customer lock-in.
Unless, of course, the sales were so low that operating the sales cost more than they brought in. Somehow I doubt this for these particular games, though.

People would just ignore such a line in the license back when software came in a box.

Such a line would have been invalid in many jurisdictions anyway.

[KynikossDragonn]

It's worth saying that the Unreal Gold you could get on Steam and GOG was from that "Unreal Anthology" release by "Midway" and had modified core packages that result in version mismatches with every single server, and crashes/errors because of this with certain custom maps.

I don't really mind that getting finally de-listed because it's a garbage release of Unreal Gold.

A lot of the decisions I've seen Epic making seem to be driven by "shareholders" more than what actual people want, so I'm not even surprised in the slightest this happened. When a company is "publicly traded" you get all these morons who don't care about us and only care about profiteering off of us. And people are still going to continue buying into Fortnite and whatever else even after this, nothing really changes.

[dpJudas]

Such a line would have been invalid in many jurisdictions anyway.

Yes, but is it still invalid if its zip file you download from a server after buying a license?