Unreal Tournament 2004 is now grabbable for free and optimised for modern PCs, thanks to dedicated fans

The OldUnreal community went ahead and got Epic's permission to revive the classic shooter

Well, this is cool. You can now download Unreal Tournament 2004 for free and with a patch that ensures it'll run smoothly on modern hardware. This is all thanks to a fan community called OldUnreal, who've made it their mission to keep Epic's classic shooters alive, even going as far as getting the Fortnite publishers' permission to do so.

As spotted by Parade Call Gamer, the OldUnreal lot have now pushed their re-release live, alongside a hefty community patch. That's the same OldUnreal lot who gave Unreal Gold and Unreal Tournament similar treatments a couple of years ago.

"Please note that this is the first public patch for Unreal Tournament 2004 in over 20 years," OldUnreal project manager Stijn-volckaert wrote in the release notes for the patch's latest version. "We have implemented numerous fixes and improvements, written a new SDL backend for Linux and macOS, and even a new renderer. We have also migrated the entire codebase to modern build systems. Some new bugs may have slipped in!"

As the OldUnreal team outlined when they announced this revival late last year, their revival works by grabbing UT 2004's original disc image via a Windows installer you can download from the group's website. You'll then need to mosey on over to Github to grab the community patch which spruces up the game. That's also where Linux and Mac users can find UT 2004 installers for those operating systems.

Classics like this being preserved via free distribution is always good news. Especially so in this case given UT 2004 is so important to PCdom that RPS co-founderman Jim Rossignol rated its importanceness as vitally high when compling a presentation on the greatest, most important PC games of all time back in 2011.