The original Unreal is free online, Epic Games says it’s fine

Game preservation, or lack thereof, is a hot topic among gamers and developers at the moment. So it’s good to hear that the owners of an important bit of gaming history are both aware that their games are being shared online for free and explicitly endorsing it.

I’m talking about the classic PC shooter Unreal and its multiplayer sequel Unreal Tournament, which can both be downloaded from the Internet Archive here and here, respectively.

If you’re not old enough to remember the Clinton administration, you might only know “Unreal” as the engine that powers tons of popular 3D games today. It’s named after one of Epic’s oldest games from 1998, a Quake-style early 3D shooter, and the game engine has been developed ever since as the company’s primary product.

While Unreal was never quite the same cultural touchstone as other early shooter games, like Doom or Half-Life, it had a thriving online multiplayer scene with Unreal Tournament in 1999, which also saw console releases on the PS2 and Dreamcast.

Though various updates and special editions have been made available through the years, the original versions of these games currently can’t be purchased or played unless you track down the original discs. But you can get ancient copies of Unreal and Unreal Tournament on the Internet Archive, recently highlighted by user-run Discord servers and ResetEra.

In the most technical sense, downloading these files is copyright infringement in the US and other countries. The games are commercial products that were sold at retailers, after all.

But in a refreshing turn of events, an Epic spokesperson reached out to members of the Discord community and gave official permission for users to not only download the original games but also apply community-developed patches to get them running on modern PCs. PC Gamer checked with Epic to make sure this was an official communication, and indeed, Epic confirmed that it’s all clear.

“We can confirm that Unreal 1 and Unreal Tournament are available on archive.org and people are free to independently link to and play these versions,” said the representative.

It’s a nice gesture, especially given some of the other news that has come out of this sector of the gaming industry. Nintendo has doubled-down on its “no emulators, no ROMs, ever” stance in multiple countries, naturally making exceptions for its own museum and services like Nintendo Switch Online. It has also sicced its legal teams on multiple sites that are hosting game ROM files from the 1990s and earlier, with no regard as to whether those games were available on modern systems in any form.

But other companies are treating gaming’s history with a bit more respect. Good Old Games (GOG) recently launched a preservation program, committing to updating and maintaining 100 PC classics so that they stay available and playable on modern hardware and operating systems, all with the blessing of their respective rights holders. Unreal and Unreal Tournament are not on that list.

“Time is erasing the games that shaped you. Forgotten, incompatible, unplayable,” says GOG’s promotional message. “We can fight back.”