If you want your online Unreal Tournament fix, you better act fast.
Screenshot of a blue armored character running next to armored vehicles from Unreal Tournament 2004

Epic Games announced that they are shutting down online services and online servers for several of their older titles. This is being done in an effort to support only their newer Epic Online Services. Epic already started to remove the impacted titles from all digital storefronts on December 14, as well as removed the option to purchase DLC.

Epic says that while "most" titles will still be playable offline, there are some that will no longer be playable at all. The full list of games that are having their online services turned off on January 24 include the following games. Perhaps most notable on the list are Unreal Tournament 2004 and Unreal Tournament 3.

  • 1000 Tiny Claws
  • Dance Central 1-3
  • Green Day: Rock Band
  • Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess
  • Rock Band 1-3
  • The Beatles: Rock Band
  • Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars
  • Unreal Gold
  • Unreal II: The Awakening
  • Unreal Tournament 2003
  • Unreal Tournament 2004
  • Unreal Tournament 3
  • Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition
The silver lining here is that multiplayer features for Dance Central VR and Rock Band 4 will continue to work.

Epic also says that online features for Unreal Tournament 3 will be coming back at a later date. Some noticed just yesterday that the Steam page for Unreal Tournament 3 changed its name to Unreal Tournament 3 X. They also noticed that this upcoming release will be free to everyone and contain no in-game purchases. The move to Epic Online Services means there will be cross-play between those on Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG.com versions of Unreal Tournament 3. Don't expect there to be any other significant changes made to the game once this free-to-play release happens.