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.
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 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.
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?
The pros and cons of using a third-party game engine
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.
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 game engines can be used to build most game types. It’s just a matter of how easy or difficult it is to adapt them.
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.
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.
Why is Unreal, specifically, problematic?
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. 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.
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, for example:
And let’s not forget the unexpected darling of this year’s gaming landscape, Black Myth: Wukong:
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 would claim they’re “not experiencing these problems” on their rigs, this is factually impossible due to the nature of UE5’s performance issues.
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 titles.
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 it is, performance-wise. From Remnant 2 to Lords of the Fallen, there’s not a single UE5 game I’d classify as viable for low-spec rigs.
The problem isn’t the current-day situation, but the state of things 10 years down the line
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 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.
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.
Just off the top of my head, we already know that all of the following projects are or will be running on Unreal 5:
- STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl
- Cyberpunk 2077 sequel
- The Witcher remake
- new Halo titles
- Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater
On this short list, we’re losing some really interesting, bespoke tech. Sure, much of it had been left to rot several generations behind, but still. Between the loss of X-Ray, REDEngine, Slipspace, Fox Engine, and countless others, I cannot imagine that relying purely on Unreal for everything will be a good idea in the long run. But hey, maybe I’m just being annoying for no good reason, right? Surely there’s no value in losing unique, purpose-built game engines? Makes you wonder, though.
Unreal has a choke-hold on the gaming industry, and that’s not going to change anytime soon
I’ll concede that all of this might just be fear-mongering and I may very well be wrong in being skeptical over Unreal Engine’s domination of the modern game development scene.
The fact of the matter is that Epic didn’t just win over developers by now, but the wider “gamer” communities as well. People are already calling for anything and everything to be remade or moved over to new builds of Unreal, and it’s not even hard to see why:
- AAAs running on Unreal look great (and run awfully, but that’s less important).
- Indie studios and solo developers can slap together rapid-fire UE5 demos that look photo-realistic.
- “Fan-remakes” of beloved titles are being developed left and right.
There’s an awful lot of grassroots marketing mojo that’s gone into UE5 by now, and much of that is well-warranted. Whether the pros truly outweigh the cons in the long run, though, we’ll just have to wait and see. Unreal is way too entrenched by now to be done away with, and the competition is unfortunately questionable at best. And so it goes.
Published: Oct 14, 2024 08:24 am