{"id":617170,"date":"2024-10-14T08:24:55","date_gmt":"2024-10-14T13:24:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jbsgame.com\/?p=617170"},"modified":"2024-10-14T08:25:03","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T13:25:03","slug":"soon-enough-the-world-will-run-on-unreal-engine-5-and-thats-a-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jbsgame.com\/soon-enough-the-world-will-run-on-unreal-engine-5-and-thats-a-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Soon enough, the world will run on Unreal Engine 5, and that’s a problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long gone are the days when almost every game development studio came up with its own proprietary game engine. It’s been a long time coming, but we’re finally at the stage where Unreal Engine 5 truly dominates the industry, and I feel this isn’t a good thing at all.<\/p>

One could argue about the ubiquity of Unreal Engine all day long, granted. The engine’s claim to fame began way, way back in the days of Unreal Engine 2, only for it to develop into one of the<\/em> go-to third-party development solutions as Epic Games moved to release Unreal Engine 3. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of UE, as we’ve had close to a thousand games produced on UE3 and UE4 in the past. UE5, in comparison, is even more monumental.<\/p>

Having access to a comprehensive one-size-fits-most set of game production tools effectively democratized the production pipeline for small teams that couldn’t afford to make their own development kit. From that point of view, UE is a phenomenal choice. Is it perfect, though?<\/p><\/iframe>

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Screenshot by Destructoid<\/figcaption><\/figure>

The pros and cons of using a third-party game engine<\/h2>

Before moving on to the crux of the matter, I’ve got to set the stage for my qualms about Unreal. For someone who isn’t familiar with the verbiage of the what, why, and how of a “game engine,” it’s easy to lose track of the argument.<\/p>

A game engine is essentially the framework within which games are made. Generic game engines such as Unreal and Unity can be modified to accommodate virtually any type of game, while stuff such as RPGMaker is obviously tailored towards role-playing games, specifically. There’s no hard line to be drawn between the two, however: most<\/em> game engines can be used to build most<\/em> game types. It’s just a matter of how easy or difficult it is to adapt them.<\/p>

Now, the thing about UE and Unity, specifically, is that they’re extremely popular due to having a lot of general-purpose software already embedded. On one side, this means game developers can rapidly deploy gameplay solutions (physics, rendering, features, assets, etc.) without spending time on developing them from the ground up. On the other hand, it also means you may inherit some of an engine’s quirks and problems that won’t be easy to fix.<\/p>

The pro of using a third-party game engine is that you’re essentially relegating the very baseline of your production pipeline to someone else. This frees you up to work on the bits that make sense for your particular project! Tech debt becomes effectively a non-issue with Unreal, as Epic Games works tirelessly to stay at the cutting edge of game dev. <\/p>

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Screenshot via Destructoid.<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Why is Unreal, specifically, problematic?<\/h2>

Had I worked on this article just a few years ago, it wouldn’t have been all about Unreal to begin with. Notably, Unreal and Unity walked in effective lock-step until Unity nuked its own goodwill by attempting to implement a runtime fee policy<\/a>. This was a phenomenally terrible business decision that not only diminished Unity’s market share, but elevated the appeal of Unreal Engine 5. It also led to a situation where everyone and their mum was using UE5 for game dev.<\/p>

Now, if you’re even remotely sensitive to shoddy performance and questionable optimization, you’re not going to like where I’m going with this. We only really need to look at Digital Foundry’s coverage of Unreal Engine games on YouTube to get a sense of where the issues lie. Take the recent (phenomenal) Silent Hill 2 Remake<\/em>, for example:<\/p>

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And let’s not forget the unexpected darling of this year’s gaming landscape, Black Myth: Wukong<\/em>:<\/p>

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Notice a pattern? Unreal Engine 5 struggles a whole lot with stuttering. Partially due to shoddy shader compilation setups and partially due to strange traversal load-ins, it seems like the majority of game developers working with Epic’s engine have a problem delivering a stutter-free gaming experience. And even though some<\/em> would claim they’re “not experiencing these problems” on their rigs, this is factually impossible due to the nature of UE5’s performance issues.<\/p>

Granted, it’s not that the previous versions of Unreal were immune to these problems, as shown with the UE4 build used for Respawn Entertainment’s Jedi: Survivor<\/em> titles<\/a>. <\/p>

This is the bit I mentioned about inherited problems: Unreal Engine 5 is infamous for its seemingly unfixable stuttering. To say nothing of just how heavy<\/em> it is, performance-wise. From Remnant 2<\/em> to Lords of the Fallen<\/em>, there’s not a single UE5 game I’d classify as viable for low-spec rigs.<\/p>

\"Lightsaber<\/figure>

The problem isn’t the current-day situation, but the state of things 10 years down the line<\/h2>

Now, to be perfectly fair, I’m a pretty big fan of Unreal Engine 5 as a software kit. I’m a proponent of tech such as Lumen and Nanite, and I think we’d probably<\/em> be better off with Epic’s standardized rendering solutions rather than with something Nvidia might cook up. Tech exclusivity is not something I’m keen on.<\/p>

My biggest concern isn’t with the fact that everyone’s trying to build something on top of UE5 as such, but the fact that we’ve got huge, tenured studios leaving behind their legacy tech stacks to move on to someone else’s third-party solution.<\/p>

Just off the top of my head, we already know that all of the following projects are or will be running on Unreal 5:<\/p>