Unreal and Unreal Tournament for Free, This Time Legally. Epic Games Blessed Initiative
Epic Games was supposed to allow Old Unreal fans to make Unreal and Unreal Tournament available for free, though not unconditionally.
Epic Games was supposed to allow the free distribution of Unreal Gold and Unreal Tournament GOTY, at least in some form. According to the moderation team of the Old Unreal channel on Discord, Tim Sweeney's company has permitted fans to share "complete" versions of the iconic FPS and its online version. These are available in the form of installers that download the game's disk image in .iso format from Archive.org.
Both files automatically unpack this format and download the latest version of OldUnreal – a fan modification, or rather an update, for older installments of the Unreal series. At the moment, Old Unreal has only released versions for Windows, but it is developing installers for other operating systems. You will find detailed instructions on the OU Discord channel.
Epic Games hasn't officially commented on these reports, but the Old Unreal crew has long been in contact with the company and fans have its permission "in writing." It's worth noting that this group has been responsible for the unofficial development of the series (i.e. updating older versions) for a long time and does so in agreement with Epic Games.
What is important, however, is that this doesn't make the "complete" editions of Unreal and Unreal Tournament free and open-source software (FOSS). Epic didn't allow free distribution of these games, only the provision of installers by Old Unreal. They download game files in .iso format from Archive.org.
This news delighted fans because almost 2 years ago Epic Games withdrew six games from the Unreal series (and many other titles) due to the disabling of access to online features.
