Epic Games Will Be Turning Off Online Functionality For Older Games

Epic Games has announced that it will be turning off online services for many of its “out-of-date” titles as it moves everything to support its Epic Online Services “with its unified friends system, voice chat features, parental controls, and parental verification features.” The company does, at least, specify that some of the affected games will still be playable offline but that some of them will not be brought back at all.

 

Epic Games announced this in a blog post, where the company also apologized. There are many big-name games affected by this including various iterations of Unreal Tournament, a series that continues to see support from players years down the line, but they are certainly out of their heyday at this point. Other games that are affected by this include various Rock Band titles, Dance Central 1-3, Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess, and 1000 Tiny Claws.

These games will still be playable offline, but all online play will be gone. Furthermore, Epic Games has removed DLC purchases from digital storefronts. It has also, quite randomly, removed Mac and Linux versions of Hatoful Boyfriend and Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star as well as Battle Breakers servers, and that last one will only be accessible until the end of December.

Everything else will be shut down on 24 January 2023, but Epic Games does end by saying: “Thank you to all of the players and communities who have enjoyed these titles over the years.”

Removing games that shouldn’t have been too difficult to keep on its platform does not seem to be the best way to honor old games, but businesses often find ways to cut costs, and bringing these games to its new online system would likely produce too little return for too much effort. So, goodbye good old Epic games from yesteryear. 
 

Justin van Huyssteen (@LC_Lupus)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed