Epic CEO Time Sweeney has blamed developers for issues with games made in Unreal Engine 5, stating the “main cause is the order of development”.
A number of games developed with UE5 released recently have had issues with performance, including the likes of Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater (out today!) and Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, but ever since the engine’s release there have been games with stuttering and poor frame rates.
Now, speaking to media at the Unreal Fest in South Korea (thanks Clawsomegamer), Sweeney put the onus on developers and the need for better education.
“The main cause is the order of development,” he said. “Many studios build for top-tier hardware first and leave optimisation and low-spec testing for the end. Ideally, optimisation should begin early – before full content build-out. We’re doing two things: strengthening engine support with more automated optimisation across devices, and expanding developer education so ‘optimise early’ becomes standard practice. If needed, our engineers can step in.
“Game complexity is much higher than 10 years ago, so it’s hard to solve purely at the engine level; engine makers and game teams need to collaborate. We’re also bringing Fortnite optimisation learnings into Unreal Engine, so titles run better on low-spec PCs.”
Essentially, developers are too focused on high-end gaming PCs and consoles, meaning those on the lower end are suffering.
That’s all well and good for the biggest developers, but for smaller indies optimisation can be a huge challenge. Arguably, Epic needs to build on those education efforts further to help studios get the most out of the engine.
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