Epic Games announced today that it is shutting down "legacy online services and servers (opens in new tab)" for a number of older games, including "Rock Band" and "Unreal," in order to transition to exclusive support for Epic Online Services.

Epic's online services SDK began with "Fortnite" (open in new tab) and includes everything from basics like friend lists, voice chat, and matchmaking to developer features like inventory and purchase management, game analytics, and support requests and everything in between. Earlier this year, cross-play support was added, first with PlayStation and then with Epic and Steam (open in new tab).

With this system now well established, Epic is moving to "support only Epic Online Services with a unified friend system, voice chat functionality, parental controls, and parental authentication features. This means that Epic's older online games will be disconnected. The good news is that most of these games will continue to be playable offline, solo or in local multiplayer.

Games that will remain playable and affected include:

These games will also stop being sold on all digital storefronts and will no longer be available for in-game DLC purchases. For some reason, Epic has also removed the Mac and Linux versions of Hatoful Boyfriend and Hatoful Boyfriend: they will remain available for purchase on Steam.

Several games will be completely inaccessible when the switch is flipped. These include Battle Breakers, which will close on December 30, Rock Band Blitz, the Rock Band Companion app, SingSpace, and the alpha version of the "new" Unreal Tournament (opens in new tab) announced in 2014. This includes all of these, all of which will close on January 24, 2023. Players who have made purchases on Battle Breakers using Epic's direct payment system within the past 180 days will automatically be reimbursed.

The end of online service for Unreal Tournament games is not exactly the same as for newer shooters. Perhaps players can set up a dedicated server that other players can connect to and play on, but there is no master server list that the server browser can access, so players need to know the IP of the server they want to join in order to get into the game. This is not really a problem for groups of friends who want to get together online for some UT2K4 action, but it does mean that jumping into a random pickup game is no longer an option.

Amidst the gloom, there is some good news: Epic is bringing back Unreal Tournament 3, originally released in 2007, as Unreal Tournament 3 X. No official announcement has been made at this time, and Epic has declined to comment further (although the announcement does state that there are "plans to bring back the online features" of UE3), but earlier today the Unreal Tournament 3 Steam page was updated with a new name, description, features.

"Download it from anywhere you want, launch it, and play with anyone you want," the Steam page reads. Unreal Tournament X supports cross-play between all PC players, regardless of whether they are logged into their Steam, Epic Games Store, or GOG accounts.

"There are no microtransactions or bindings. This is a fully featured, award-winning first-person shooter that you've fallen in love with.

A release date for the "new" Unreal Tournament 3 X has not yet been announced and is not currently listed on the Epic Games Store or GOG, but we expect it to be available fairly soon. We will let you know when it is available.