New Free Unreal Tournament will Rely on Crowdsourcing

Epic games has revealed that it's working on the next Unreal Tournament--despite adamant denials at GDC earlier this year--and the player community will play a vital role in the game's development.

According to Epic vice president Mark Rein, this latest Unreal will be entirely free, not just "free to play." Members of the public who have opted to pay the subscription for the studio's Unreal Engine 4 (which allows them to access the C++ code and develop using the engine) will be able to participate directly in the crowdsourced development of this latest Unreal. Epic plans for the game  to incorporate a marketplace for user-created game mods, which they can give away or sell; the studio will then skim a percentage of the profit from those sales and use that to fund the game and its upkeep.

This latest installment is being developed by what Rein refers to as a "small team of Unreal Tournament veterans." While the game is still very early in the development stages, Epic plans to release an Alpha as soon as one is playable, and will be setting up forums for more development-minded players to give the studio feedback during development.