The next Unreal Tournament will be free and powered by fans

Epic Games has revealed their plans for bringing back Unreal Tournament. During a stream on Twitch, Epic announced that work has begun on the next installment of their flagship arena shooter franchise. The game will be free and supported through a community-driven model similar to Valve’s Team Fortress 2. Subscribers to Epic’s Unreal Engine 4 development tools will be able to create content for the game and sell their creations with a percentage of those sales going to Epic. Developer Steven Polge posted an outline of the plan, including a caveat explaining that this will be a collaborative effort.

A lot of this is brand new for Epic, and we don’t yet have everything figured out. Things will probably definitely go wrong from time to time, and when they do, we’ll have to work through them together. There will be a lot of tough decisions to make, and not every feature will make it into the game. But if you’re a fan of Unreal Tournament, a UE4 developer, or a future modder – or if you just want to learn how we make games – we hope you’ll join us. It’s going to be fun.

Epic says that the development process with the community begins today on the forums.