Epic Games has shelved the development of its shooter game Unreal Tournament, a source close to the development studio confirmed. The studio reassigned the game's development team to focus on its survival game Fortnite instead.
The next Unreal Tournament game has been in development since 2014 but is still in its pre-alpha stage four years later. The game's last update was released in June 2017.
The game's development team consisted of just several people that worked on several titles but still primarily focused on the development of the shooter game.
According to a source close to the development studio all members of the game's development team have been reassigned to work on Epic Games' survival game Fortnite.
The game became popular after the studio released Fortnite: Battle Royale, the free PvP version in which 100 players go head to head. With the game the studio hopes to compete with Bluehole's PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.
The decision of the studio to reassign developers to Fortnite and cancel Unreal Tournament is not surprising. Fortnite: Battle Royale is currently the 6th most streamed video game on Twitch, even surpassing PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.
Last week Epic Games announced it will shut down its MOBA game Paragon in April. What effect the decision to reassign developers has on the future of shooter game Unreal Tournament is still unknown.
We reached out to Epic Games for comments but have yet to hear back.
Comments
This comment has been removed. It's not a rumor. Epic hasn't touched UT in a long time. If you want to be realistic, the last substantive updates to UT happened 2 years ago. Since then, Paragon both launched and was canned, Fortnite launched, Fortnite BR launched, and during all of that timeframe only nominal updates to UT. It's dead Jim.