UE5 Growing Pains: Blame the Dev, Not the Engine

It’s a familiar story by now. A highly anticipated game arrives, years after its initial announcement, built using Unreal Engine 5, only to suffer from significant performance issues across various platforms.

A brief survey of social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit reveals a common sentiment: frustration with UE5. Many users express negative opinions or hope for the engine’s demise.

This anti-Unreal sentiment is widespread among gamers, leading to apprehension about future games developed with Epic Games’ engine. CDPR fans, in particular, are concerned about the transition from Cyberpunk 2077’s REDengine 4 to UE5 for The Witcher 4.

Recently, the criticism of Unreal Engine 5 has intensified, with titles like Mafia: The Old Country and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater experiencing frame rate drops and stuttering, even on high-end hardware.

However, echoing Newton’s third law, some developers working with Unreal Engine 5 are offering a different perspective. They argue that the performance problems in AAA games stem from suboptimal development practices.

If Unreal Engine 5 were inherently flawed, how could games like The Finals, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, or even Marvel Rivals perform well? This is the question posed by Eric “Aheyrs” Rajot, game director of the upcoming horror extraction shooter Beautiful Light.

Rajot has consistently challenged the broad generalizations against Unreal Engine 5, citing his direct experience, as Beautiful Light will also be powered by Epic’s engine upon its release in 2026.

In a recent post on social media, Rajot suggested that UE5 performance issues are “mostly the result of bad development practice rather than engine flaw.” He further commended Epic for providing excellent optimization tools and comprehensive documentation within the developer toolkit.

While the Beautiful Light team takes a more direct approach to the Unreal Engine 5 conversation, other developers are focusing on education.

Offworld Industries, the studio behind the tactical shooter Squad, has faced considerable criticism regarding its decision to migrate the game to Unreal Engine 5.

Rather than a sudden transition, Squad is involving its player community in the process through regular playtests of the UE5 version. This allows the developers to identify issues and refine the game before its public release.

As with many Unreal 5 games, initial impressions were mixed, with performance not quite matching the visual improvements. These challenges led the studio to delay the release of Squad 9.0.

In a video interview with Slay3Kilo, Squad’s tech lead, Norbert “Norby” Rothermel, explained the reasoning behind choosing Unreal Engine 5 and the performance targets the team has set. It is a worthwhile watch for anyone interested in understanding why developers are investing in this technology, even if they aren’t directly interested in Squad.

Rothermel stated that the RTX 3060 is the most common graphics card among Steam users, making it “the target system” for optimizing performance.

He explained that developers “don’t really look at the high end at all,” contrary to popular belief. For example, Steam data shows that many players still use graphics cards with 6GB of VRAM, such as the GTX 1060. This data helps Offworld determine the game’s memory constraints.

With adequate optimization, even a computer without dedicated VRAM can run an Unreal Engine 5 game. “You might encounter more issues like textures being blurry because the data doesn’t get fed quickly enough, or there might be more issues with frame drops,” but Rothermel emphasized that a 1060 or equivalent is the minimum recommended for “a good experience.”

Despite the ongoing debate about Unreal Engine 5, it has firmly established itself as the engine of choice for games prioritizing photorealistic graphics. From a player’s point of view, whether it’s the engine or developer optimization at fault is irrelevant—the goal is smooth gameplay that provides a satisfying experience for everyone.