Epic Games China has announced the Atlas Technology MMO suite, an extension of Unreal Engine 3's functionality focused on supporting persistent online games.

The Paul Meegan-headed Chinese division of Epic is currently using Atlas Technology for its unannounced projects, and has also been in private evaluation for a year, licensed by developers in North America, Europe and Asia, according to the firm.

Atlas Technology is intended to be a pre-integrated online game development solution for Unreal Engine 3 licensees, aimed at saving them the time and money involved in adapting third-party persistent server solutions or building proprietary server apps.

Epic Games China itself was most recently in the news for the establishment of Seattle-based Titan Studios, whose core team previously operated as Darkstar Industries and most recently unveiled Fat Princess, a PlayStation Network-exclusive game slated for 2009.

According to information released at the time, Titan Studios is currently helping on several unannounced Unreal Engine 3-based projects, including a massively multiplayer online game, presumably also using Atlas tech.

"UE3 is already a proven and powerful MMO engine,” says Epic Games China CEO Paul Meegan. "With Atlas Technology, we’re now providing a purpose built solution that takes care of a lot of the heavy lifting and Unreal client modification.

[The preceding article by Leigh Alexander also appeared on Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra.]