Epic kicks off an Unreal Tournament sale on Steam tomorrow, with discounts and a free UT3 weekend to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the original UT's demo release.

For the festivities, Unreal Tournament will be reduced to a mere $1.99. UT3 will be free to play for a long weekend starting tomorrow, coupled with a 66% discount. The bumper Unreal Deal Pack will also be marked down by 66% for the weekend.

The Unreal Tournament demo being celebrated is available over on FileShack in a teensy 53MB download with now-laughable system requirements.

The full Unreal Tournament arrived on November 30, followed by UT 2003 in October 2002, UT 2004 in March 2004, then finally 3 in 2007. The shooter series began life as singleplayer with 1998's Unreal, succeeded in 2003 by Unreal II: The Awakening.

A new study published in the journal Cyberpsychology and Behavior found that red teams triumph over blue teams more than half of the time in online multiplayer shooters, reports the Associated Press.

Researchers studied the outcomes of 1,347 matches in Epic Games' Unreal Tournament 2004 (PC), in which players were allowed to choose between joining the red or blue team. The study found that the red team won 55% of the time.

University of Copenhagen neuroscientist Mihai Moldovan suggested that one possible explanation for the skew in results could be the color red's role as a psychological distractor for men. Results were collected by Moldovan from public ... Read more

You may recall an extensive look at tactical gaming from Shacker dslyecxi, who was sure to note at the end of his first work that despite the document's length there were various subjects left unaddressed. One such subject was apparently an Unreal Tournament mod called Infiltration, which he had yet to play. Dslyecxi has now released a followup article dedicated entirely to that mod, going into its substantial weapons selection and customization options and tactical gameplay features.

The surprising thing is the degree to which the animations have been done. Pick up a 1911, for instance, and you'll find a perfect example of the typically exceptional attention to detail displayed throughout the mod. If you empty the magazine and have the slide lock back, upon holstering it you'll see that your character releases the slide before holstering it - just like anyone would do in reality, since you don't holster a slidelocked pistol. It gets better than that, however - draw the pistol once more and the slide will be forward on an empty chamber and empty magazine. Pull the trigger and the hammer will drop on the empty chamber, after which your character's thumb will cock it back again. Reload at this point and your character will drop the empty magazine, insert a new one, and then manually pull the slide to the rear before releasing it to chamber a new round. That Infiltration has dedicated animations for something like this, when almost as a rule all other games miss such details, is once again testament to the incredible attention to detail displayed by the team.

As in the prior tactical gaming effort, the article is illustrated with plenty of screenshots and videos.

Part three of Unreal Ops' history of Unreal Technology feature is now available, taking a look back at the development of the original Unreal Tournament. It features Q&As with guys like Epic's CliffyB and James Schmalz & Pancho Eekels of Digital Extremes.

The UTPG website is now offering a new, unofficial, patch for the original Unreal Tournament. It addresses those exploits we mentioned before (story). Though unofficial, Epic did help out this project by providing the source code. Thanks HomeLAN Fed.

HomeLAN Fed has posted a Q&A with Laurent Delayen of Kamehan Studios, who answers questions about the Tactical Ops game which was originally released as a mod for Unreal Tournament.

A new version of Strike Force for Unreal Tournament has been released, as seen in this forum thread. The 1.80 alpha release is mirrored on FileShack. The team is looking for feedback before a final release.

The Infogrames Support page has a new patch for Tactical Ops: Assault On Terror, the retail version of the Unreal Tournament mod. It has a pretty big list of changes and fixes. It's mirrored on FileShack.

A new version of the Thievery UT mod for Unreal Tournament has been released, upgrading either v1.0 or v1.1 to v1.2. For those unfamiliar with the mod, Thievery recreates the games Thief and Thief 2 in the Unreal engine, adding multiplayer support among other things.

A new version of the Jailbreak mod for Unreal Tournament has been released, Jailbreak 3 Gold. The Gold version adds nine new maps and a tutorial for new players among other things. You can grab the full version or updates from FileShack.

Epic has released an updated Unreal Tournament DLL for server admins. This fixes a denial of service attack problem and a creeping ping problem under Windows 2000. If you don't run a server, you don't need this. Thanks Blues News.

A patch for the Thievery mod for Unreal Tournament has been released. It fixes a whole bunch of bugs from the first release.

Few people wanted us to note that the Thievery mod for Unreal Tournament has been released. Here's a description "This modification changes UT into a whole new game, pitting a team of thieves against a team of guards in a pseudo-medieval setting", the first release is a 122mb download.

Dynotaku let us know that Operation Na Pali for Unreal Tournament has been released. Not just any mod, as this doesn't add multiplayer modes but rather a single player campaign. It's a 158mb download.

A new patch for Tactical Ops has been released. This patch is meant to fix compatability issues between the retail version and the Unreal Tournament mod version of the game. It's a 4.45mb fix.

The Tactical Ops site has word of a patch for the recently released retail version of Tactical Operations. There is also a free version of the retail version if you have Unreal Tournament, though it is a 200mb download.

GameSpy has posted a preview of Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror. The retail version of this Unreal Tournament mod should be in stores later this month.

According to GameSpy Daily, the retail version of the Unreal Tournament Tac Ops has gone gold. Four new screenshots are up as well, and Fileplanet has a new movie.

HomeLAN Fed has a preview of Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror, the upcoming retail version of what started out as a Unreal Tournament modification.

Strike Force Center has a second map pack for the Unreal Tournament Strike Force mod. The 58mb download offers 16 new maps.