Editing Deathmatch (video games) (section)

=== ''Unreal'' ===
With the game ''[[Unreal (1998 video game)|Unreal]]'' (1998, by [[Epic Games|Epic]]), the rules were enhanced with some widely accepted improvements:

* spawn protection (usually 2–4 seconds), which is a period of invulnerability after a player (re)enters combat (such as after being killed and respawning); spawn protection was automatically terminated when the player used a weapon (including non-attack usage, such as zooming the sniper rifle). Spawn protection prevents "easy frags" — killing a player which just spawned and is slightly disoriented and almost unarmed.
* "suicide-cause tracking" – if a player dies by "suicide" that was caused by some other player's action, such as knocking him off the cliff or triggering a crusher or gas chamber, the player that caused such death is credited the kill and the killed player does not lose a frag (it's not counted as a suicide). This concept increases the entertainment potential of the game (as it gives players options to be "cunning"), but it at the same time adds complexity, which may be the reason why Epic's main competitor, Id software, did not implement this concept into ''[[Quake III Arena]]'' (just as they did not implement spawn protection).