Epic begins delisting older titles & DLC, most online services to shut down January 24th [UPDATE]

[UPDATE 12/20/22] GOG.com announced this morning that UT 2004, UT GOTY, Unreal Gold and Unreal 2 will be leaving their platform on Friday December 23rd. Our original post from December 15th continues below.

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Epic Games announced yesterday that several older “out-of-date” titles and DLC were beginning to be removed from digital stores and that online features for those games would be shut down in relatively short order on January 24th. The full announcement lays out the titles:

Starting today, we will begin turning off out-of-date online services and servers for many older games in the Epic family as we move to solely support Epic Online Services with its unified friends system, voice chat features, parental controls, and parental verification features. Most titles will be playable offline, while some will no longer be playable. We apologize to the players affected by these changes.

The following titles will have all online services disabled on January 24, after which players can continue playing single or local multiplayer modes offline:

• 1000 Tiny Claws
• Dance Central 1-3
  • Note: Dance Central VR online multiplayer will remain available
• Green Day: Rock Band
• Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess
• Rock Band 1-3
  • Note: Rock Band 4 online multiplayer will remain available
• The Beatles: Rock Band
• Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars
• Unreal Gold
• Unreal II: The Awakening
• Unreal Tournament 2003
• Unreal Tournament 2004
• Unreal Tournament 3
  • Note: We have plans to bring back online features via Epic Online Services in the future.
• Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition

We have started removing games that were still available from all digital storefronts and are disabling any in-game DLC purchasing as of today. We also removed the Mac and Linux versions of Hatoful Boyfriend and Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star from storefronts today, as well as the mobile title DropMix. Players who already own these titles will still be able to play. 

Battle Breakers will shut down and no longer be accessible to players on December 30. We will automatically refund players for any in-game purchases made via Epic direct payment 180 days prior to today. Unreal Tournament (Alpha), Rock Band Blitz, Rock Band Companion app and SingSpace (Oculus) will be shut down and no longer accessible to players on January 24.

Thank you to all of the players and communities who have enjoyed these titles over the years.

Epic Games Announcement – December 14, 2022

As of this writing on December 15th things are still up in the air as far as availability goes. Here is a rundown of what we found was and wasn’t available at the time:

• All Unreal and Unreal Tournament titles have been removed from Steam but are still available on GOG.com (Unreal, Unreal 2, UT GOTY, UT 2004). 
• Some Rock Band DLC remains on the Xbox 360 marketplace and PlayStation Store. 
• 1000 Tiny Claws remains available on the PlayStation Store on PlayStation 3. 
• Psyonix’s progenitor to Rocket League, Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars has been delisted on PlayStation 3 and attempting to create an online match locked up my console.
• Battle Breakers, SingSpace, and Unreal Tournament (Alpha) have been removed from stores.

Thanks to everyone who pointed out the news yesterday. I’ve added the January 24th date to the Watch List calendar and we’ll have pages up on the site later.