It became a constant since Unreal for Epic Games to pick up members of their community, so they can work with them. Unreal Tournament came to the stores with around 8 mappers having worked on it, some of them gathered from the same Unreal community. The game was a success. Also, its modding and mapping community grew very well. By the time Unreal Tournament 2004 came out, the quantity of mappers grew up to almost 20. Due to this, Epic Games tried to do UT3 more "modding friendly". Some particular examples include:
- Jack Porter created the UWindows GUI for Unreal and got hired by Epic Games in order to adapt it for Unreal Tournament. He also did the WebAdmin interface.
- Sidney "Clawfist" Rauchberger made hobby maps for Unreal and UT before contributing to Tournament with the Bonus Pack maps CTF-Hydro16, CTF-Noxion16, CTF-Beatitude, CTF-Ratchet, DM-Agony and DOM-CiDom). He would later contribute to 2003 with the Epic Bonus Pack's DM-1on1-Mixer and to 2004 with the aforementioned Mixer, DM-1on1-Irondust, the XP Bonus Maps map ONS-Aridoom and for the Mega Pack the other half of CTF-BP2-Pistola and DM-BP2-GoopGod. He later became one of the selected core mappers for Unreal Tournament 4 (having contributed with the maps CTF-BigRock, CTF-Dam, CTF-Plaza, CTF-TitanPass, DM-ASDF, DM-Solo, DM-Spacer, DM-Temple and DM-Underland).
- Warren Marshall had a similar start, mostly contributing to the console versions (DM-Halberd, DOM-Coagulate, DM-Industrial, DM-Loathing, DM-Nebula, DM-Outskirts and DM-Pantheon) as well as the Bonus Pack 4's CTF-EpicBoy. He later contributed to 2003 with BR-TwinTombs and CTF-TwinTombs and the Epic Bonus Pack's BR-Canyon and CTF-DoubleDammage, and to 2004 with a third of the ECE Bonus Pack map ONS-Urban.
- Rich "Akuma" Eastwood also had his humble starts before contributing to Tournament with the Bonus Pack maps DM-Malevolence, DM-Viridian-TOURNEY, and half of DOM-Lament][, as well as the console versions' maps DM-Babylon, DM-ColdSteelPressure, DM-NeoTokyo, DM-Sector9, DM-Underlord, CTF-Phalanx and CTF-Sepulchre.
- Eric "Ebolt" Boltjes contributed with DM-Bishop and DM-Grit-TOURNEY for the Bonus Pack 4 for Tournament.
- Phil "Wilhaven" Cole did DOM-WolfsBay. He later contributed to 2004 with AS-Junkyard, AS-Convoy, AS-FallenCity, CTF-AbsoluteZero and the second third of the ECE Bonus Pack's ONS-Urban.
- Teddie "Teddabod" Tapawan created the Unreal Tournament 2003 versions of CTF-Face and DM-Deck16, both of which were bought by Epic in order to appear in 2004 as CTF-FaceClassic and DM-Deck17.
- Streamline Studios has many former UT community members such as Sjoerd "Hourences" de Jong (more on him below) and Robert "Nathillien Trillsa" Horvatnote . They've created the Onslaught mode.
- Six out of nine maps in the Mega Pack were created by community members, in fact, six of them were Make Something Unreal Contest winners:
- Dave Kostiuk made AS-BP2-Acatana (5th. best Assault map) and half of CTF-BP2-Pistola alongside Sidney Rauchberger (best overall UT2004 map).
- Ryan Pendleton made AS-BP2-Jumpship (2nd. best Assault map).
- Lord Simeon made AS-BP2-Outback (3rd. best Assault map).
- Tynan Sylvester made the original AS-Thrust (AS-BP2-Thrust) for the Community Bonus Pack Volume II (best overall Assault map).
- Jan "Luggage" Kaluza made the original CTF-Concentrate (CTF-BP2-Concentrate) for the same pack.
- Rachel "Angel Mapper" Cordone did AS-BP2-SubRosa.
- Daniel "KaMi" Diaz did DM-BP2-Calandras.
- Ed Duke-Cox, another well-respected mapper in the community, contributed with DM-Morpheus3, DM-Sulphur and DOM-Atlantis, all of them for 2004.
- Alexander Lehmann contributd with DM-1on1-Roughinery and DM-1on1-Squader, both of them for 2004.
- Rogelio "Desperado#2" Olguin contributed with half of AS-FallenCity (with Phil Cole), AS-Mothership, DM-1on1-Desolation and DM-HyperBlast2, all of them for 2004.
- Nathan "TomWithTheWeather" Overman contributed with half of AS-RobotFactory for 2004.
- Jean "El Chicoverde" Rochefort (who has Operation Na Pali in his CV) contributed with CTF-MoonDragon for 2004.
- Paul "Tonnberry" Fahss did 2003's Epic Bonus Pack's DM-1on1-Crash as well as 2004's DM-1on1-Spirit, DM-1on1-Trite, and the remaining third of ONS-Urban from the ECE pack.
- Bastiaan "Checker" Frank did 2003's BR-Bifrost, CTF-Geothermal, DM-DE-Ironic, DM-Oceanic and DOM-ScorchedEarth, and BR-BridgeOfFate, CTF-BridgeOfFate, DM-DesertIsle and DOM-Aswan for 2004.
- Jeremy "Faceless" Graves did 2003's DM-Injector, which also appears in 2004.
- Scott "Goose" McGregor did 2003's BR-Anubis, BR-Disclosure, CTF-LostFaith, DM-Compressed, DM-DE-GrendelKeep, DM-Insidious and DM-TrainingDay; and 2004's CTF-GrassyKnoll, CTF-GrendelKeep, and half of DOM-Access.
- Lee Perry did 2003's BR-Skyline, DM-Plunge, DM-1on1-Serpentine, DM-TrainingDay and DOM-SunTemple.
- A particular example from 2004 is Sjoerd "Hourences" de Jong: in that game, both the most played map overall
and the most played Onslaught map were made by him, and found their way onto the demos, no doubt helping people get a feeling of how awesome 2004 is. Other contributions of his include DM-1on1-Idoma, DM-Rrajigar, ONS-Dawn, ONS-Dria and ONS-Adara, the latter from the ECE pack. Hourences later worked on the RPG The Chronicles Of Spellborn, and released two books called "The Hows and Whys of Level Design". - In an interesting bit, before the launch of Unreal Tournament III, a short contest was done in the Epic Forums, to give a name to a CTF map that was originally going to be called "Dead Planet". The winner was keyrat, who suggested the name "Omicron Dawn", and was credited in the game.
- The whole Unreal community got this for the 2014 reboot of ''Unreal Tournament'', as a result of Epic co-developing it with the community.
