Epic's Tim Sweeney says network code changes will prevent backwards compatibility.
Having already suffered through a six-month delay, gamers awaiting Unreal Tournament 2004 are apparently in store for another unpleasant surprise. In an e-mail sent to Unreal Tournament mod authors yesterday, Epic MegaGames founder/president Tim Sweeney revealed that UT 2004 will not be network compatible with Unreal Tournament 2003. "We had initially planned to support that," said Sweeney, "but the network code has changed so much in order to reduce bandwidth, support vehicles, and increase performance, that we couldn't keep the two games network-compatible." Sweeney confirmed the e-mail's authenticity to GameSpot earlier today.
News source: GameSpot