Classic arena shooter Unreal Tournament 2004 has risen from the grave and is now available to download for free, all thanks to a dedicated group of fans working with developer Epic Games’ blessing. And the upshot of all this that the much-loved arena FPS has received its first patch “in over 20 years”.
When Unreal Tournament 2004 originally launched, Eurogamer branded it the “mother of all first-person shooters”, praising its massive map roster, its 32-player Onslaught mode, and the introduction of vehicles. All that was enough to earn it ye olde 9/10, and plenty of other people loved it too. However, support for Unreal Tournament 2004 officially ended in 2022, when Epic terminated its legacy online services and pulled the game – alongside a number of titles – from digital storefronts.
But it turns out the end was not the end. Late last year, fan community OldUnreal announced it was working to revive Unreal Tournament 2004 (the group previously resurrected Unreal and Unreal Tournament 1999), patch it with bug fixes and quality of life improvements, then release it for free – all with Epic’s blessing. And that day has now arrived, with Unreal Tournament 2004 (as spotted by PC Gamer) available to download right now.
By heading over to the OldUnreal website, interested Windows users can download and run the group’s newly released installer. That, in turn, will grab the original Unreal Tournament 2004 disc image from OldUnreal’s servers, extract their contents, install the game, and automatically patch it to the latest version. Linux and macOS are pointed toward the group’s Github page.
“Please note that this is the first public patch for Unreal Tournament 2004 in over 20 years,” project manager (and professor of computer science) Stijn-volckaert writes in the game’s new patch notes. “We have implemented numerous fixes and improvements, written a new SDL backend for Linux and macOS, and even a new renderer. We have also migrated the entire codebase to modern build systems. Some new bugs may have slipped in!”
So there you go! The “mother of all first-person shooters” can now be downloaded and played for free – and what better time to start revisiting some video game classic than right now, when AI companies are making it increasingly difficult to buy new hardware?
