For Those Hoping To See UT3 On Linux This Holiday...

Unreal Tournament 3 was released for the PC over three years ago, and as sad as it may be, if the Linux client was released today it still would be rated highly in terms of its graphical capabilities and game-play simply due to the lack of other first-rate commercial games on Linux. The Linux gaming scene is beginning to improve thanks, in particular, to efforts by Unigine Corp and another company, but 2010 was not very exciting while 2011 should be much better.

Pretty much all hopes for the Unreal Tournament 3 Linux client to be finally released have faded away due to mysterious reasons. Last year it was still reported as being worked on by Ryan Gordon and that it was on its way while previously he also showed screenshots of this first person shooter running under Linux.

In October of last year was finally when Epic Games conceded to us they were uncertain about the UT3 Linux client and by this May they were still not hopeful of publicly releasing it -- again for reasons that haven't been publicly said, yet. Mark Rein then said this past September he doesn't think the Linux game will happen.

Ryan continues to be silent on the matter or his ongoing work, but he is working on something. There's "exciting things approaching" in the coming months while he is being hush for now on the matter, but it's not about Epic's Unreal Tournament 3.

This morning the North Carolina game company is officially announcing the Unreal Development Kit for iOS so that Unreal Engine 3 games can be developed for Apple's iPhone and iPad. But if you thought these recent developments with Epic Games bringing Unreal Engine 3 to new platforms or Ryan Gordon working on black projects rejuvenated any hope for seeing Unreal Tournament 3 on Linux, forget it. The Linux client is now officially dead.

It's no longer a matter of "I don't think it's going to happen" or "given the lack of progress it seems unlikely the UT3 Linux client will ever be completed" comment, but here is the explicit statement this morning from Steve Polge, Epic's UT3 lead designer: the UT3 Linux client isn't going to happen.

Game over.