The game was built by the developers from scratch, using leftovers from Unreal Tournament 3 as placeholders. Work began with a relatively small development team mainly composed of Unreal Tournament veteran players, fans, and Unreal Engine 4 developers.

The source code of the game is published on GitHub. Epic Games has been using forums for discussions and Twitch livestreams for regular updates. Its development is crowdsourced and open to contribution from anyone. The development for the game started on May 8, 2014, with a message from Steven Polge detailing how the project will be handled with the community, following the commercial failure of Unreal Tournament 3. The weapon roster is kept intact from Unreal Tournament 3, but two new weapons are added: the Grenade Launcher (which reverts the Rocket Launcher to its UT2004 status) and the Lightning Rifle along with the Sniper Rifle. The gameplay remains the same as past entries in the franchise, but with a new movement set, closer to that of Unreal Tournament (only the wall jump from newer games is present) but with new in-game abilities such crouch-sliding and wall running replacing the multiple jumps from past entries. Unreal Tournament 4 is the latest (as of 2018) first-person shooter entry in the franchise.

4.3.1.4 Weapons which have been in the game since release but were never Unreal Tournament 3 placeholders.

4.3.1.3 Weapons which were added after release.

4.3.1.2 Weapons which are no longer Unreal Tournament 3 placeholders.

4.3.1.1 Weapons which retain their Unreal Tournament 3 placeholders.

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