Epic Games Responds to Unreal Engine 5 Criticism

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has responded to criticism of Unreal Engine 5's optimization, which is becoming an increasingly contentious topic of late. The Epic Games boss has seemingly suggested the issue lies in the hands of developers optimizing their games too late.

In recent years, Unreal Engine 5 has only grown in popularity, with its ease of use and vast wealth of resources making it a great choice for developers big and small. However, this has not come entirely without controversy - there are plenty of high-profile Unreal Engine 5 releases that have suffered performance issues on various platforms, leading to a negative sentiment around the powerful engine in gaming communities online.

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By Dominik Bošnjak

Epic Games CEO Says Developers Are Optimizing Games Too Late

As reported by Pure Xbox, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney recently suggested at a roundtable interview in South Korea that individual developers could be to blame. "The primary reason why Unreal Engine 5-based games don’t run smoothly on certain PCs or GPUs is the development process," Sweeney said. "Many developers develop games for high-end hardware, then perform optimization and testing on lower-spec devices in the final stages of development. Of course, optimization is by no means an easy task, it’s a very challenging one. Ideally, optimization should be implemented early in development, before full-scale content build begins." There are plenty of Unreal Engine 5 games with great performance, so the engine isn't fundamentally broken.

That said, Sweeney did confirm that Epic Games is looking into solutions to help with this going forward. One is to give developers "automated optimization features for various devices, making the process faster and easier," and the other is to simply raise awareness for developers of how important optimization is during development.

He also blamed the complexity of video game development as another reason UE5 games aren't as optimized as they could be, saying, "Compared to a decade ago, the complexity of games themselves has significantly increased, making optimization at the engine level a challenge. Consequently, game developers and engine developers like us are increasingly required to collaborate to solve these issues.

One thing is for sure: Unreal Engine 5 isn't going anywhere. It is currently undergoing widespread adoption around the gaming industry, and there's no sign that it's set to stop any time soon. Last year, it was confirmed that the Halo series is moving to Unreal Engine 5, dropping its proprietary Slipspace Engine in the process. As it becomes more and more accessible to developers big and small, it's fair to say UE5 is in for a massive few years.

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