Tim Sweeney Blames Unreal Engine 5 Issues on Game Developers

Rush2112

Rush2112

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www.eurogamer.net

Epic CEO blames Unreal Engine 5 issues on developers, but more support incoming

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".
www.eurogamer.net www.eurogamer.net

"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."
 
'I take no responsibility for the tools I've created'





Brady Bunch K GIF
 
BennyBlanco said:
Bullshit. Even on top end hardware that they're supposedly targeting these games have serious issues.
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Which might not be a game engine issue. Developers, especially the art team, need to know their limits and scale up, not down. So many games are just brute forcing what they want and while it looks pretty in screenshots, performance is piss poor.

People can be handed a tool they don't know how to use and try to use it, but without thorough knowledge of how the tool works, you will have sub par results.

I've taught plenty of people AutoCAD throughout the years. But they can only do so much with the tools, if they don't know how to design.
 
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Bottom line is that individual studios can't really compete with Unreal 5 now. Decima is close, and that accounts for 2 or 3 games a whole gen. Everyone will be reliant on it and will have to learn to work around whatever issues it has. Whose fault is largely irrelevant. I'm sure Epic is working on it, and developers will be forced to work on it as well.
 
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It is true to a point but the whole point of using UE is that the tools are familiar to a lot of developers . But there are constant shifting goalposts in terms of new engine features and supporting different hardware features. A game optimized for older standards seemingly has go through a total remake to target the high end properly.
 
The engine came in hot this gen and the early versions of UE5 were almost like an alpha version, bad performances all around, otherwise they wouldn't make 4 hours specials for a 5.5 or 5.6 engine performance improvements. Those improvements are a little late, the gen flew by. They also require high end hardware to even look good. Its so funny to see MGS 3 remake running on a Steam deck which is roughly PS4 power and it looks worse than MGS 5 did.

It just doesn't run like it looks.

But the biggest culprit is the ecosystem. UE5 is also an ecosystem. UE5 being the most documented graphic engine out there with the most tutorials with the most peoples having knowledge of because it's free, is an ecosystem that Epic have sold to publishers that they don't need the expensive graphic engineer nerds in the studio anymore. They don't need the seniority levels they had, they can just offload to cheap labour countries to save a buck. Of course the accountants in publishing houses LOVED that. So optimization left the building.

Surprise pikachu everything runs like shit.
 
Is it me, or are people attacking him just because, as he seems to point out that developers start optimising too late into the development-cycle, which doesn't sound unreasonable?

Not saying he's right per se, but the logic is sound.
 
It goes both ways
Sure engine has its own problems
But there is also problem on dev side - not optimizing early and then just isnt enough time for proper optimization before release, as Unreal is not so simple to handle
 
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If a lot of devs have similar issues, it might not be the fault of the devs alone...

Epic could start by actually having some fucking decent documentation. For how popular Unreal Engine is, the documentation is fucking shit. And hey, maybe Timmy can add some pages about "tips for optimizing your game", if he really cares.
Instead, Epic shits out one new feature after another (instead of finishing the features that are already in experimental for months on end, sometimes even years) and tells developers to use them. Baked Lighting for static environments? Lmao, just use Lumen, bro. Why the fuck would you do LODs or even billboards of a mesh? Just use Nanite, bro. Your own particle system? Lmao, Just use Niagara, bro. And then the game runs like shit because all these systems are not open and/or documented enough to optimize shit.
 
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He is not wrong. Optimization could be planned and tested against early when possible.

The reality is that no one has an ideal development schedule.

While accurate Mr. Sweeney has forgotten what development really looks like (without infinite money and time).
 
Rush2112 said:
www.eurogamer.net

Epic CEO blames Unreal Engine 5 issues on developers, but more support incoming

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".
www.eurogamer.net www.eurogamer.net

"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."
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He hasn't blamed the developers reading here. He just said they have the bad habit to leave the optimization later and with the UE5 it's almost impossible to fix fps issues so late in the cycle. I don't think he is wrong at all.
 
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Killjoy-NL said:
Is it me, or are people attacking him just because, as he seems to point out that developers start optimising too late into the development-cycle, which doesn't sound unreasonable?

Not saying he's right per se, but the logic is sound.
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The logic isn't sound. Remember The Matrix demo built by Epic engineers to showcase the power of the engine? Now, it runs at like three times the frame rate of when it was first released because of all the optimizations done at the engine level. If internal engineers tasked with making a slice of gameplay demo couldn't get it to run optimally, then no way will a dev team that has to make a full game be able to.

UE5 came in way too early to cash in on the next-gen hype and we suffered for it. 5.4 is when the engine really started coming into its own, but that's fairly recent and most projects started on much older and poorly optimized builds and porting to newer versions isn't exactly cheap or quick for projects that are far along into their timetables.

I don't disagree the developers are also at fault, but the tools they were given just plain sucked until recently. Sure, an extremely experienced and talented developer can still work with that, but most cannot.
 
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I agree with him. Of course it's the devs. Its not an engine issue.
If they would put in actual time and effort into optimizing, we would get a different outcome. But that doesn;t bring money so yeah.
There are a lot of games on UE5 that perform without a hitch.
 
ElFenomeno said:
I agree with him. Of course it's the devs. Its not an engine issue.
If they would put in actual time and effort into optimizing, we would get a different outcome. But that doesn;t bring money so yeah.
There are a lot of games on UE5 that perform without a hitch.
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It most definitely is an engine issue as well as a dev issue.
 
He's right but the engine also has some issues they're trying to fix with each 5.x release.
Even CD Project admitted of doing the wrong choice with Cyberpunk and they're now doing like Tim is saying building the Witcher 4 targeting base PS5 as the main platform.
 
Karim said:
He hasn't blamed the developers reading here. He just said they have the bad habit to leave the optimization later and with the UE5 it's almost impossible to fix fps issues so late in the cycle. I don't think he is wrong at all.
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So he blamed the developers…
 
Karim said:
He hasn't blamed the developers reading here. He just said they have the bad habit to leave the optimization later and with the UE5 it's almost impossible to fix fps issues so late in the cycle. I don't think he is wrong at all.
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"I'm not blaming the developers, I'm blaming the development"
 
Killjoy-NL said:
Is it me, or are people attacking him just because, as he seems to point out that developers start optimising too late into the development-cycle, which doesn't sound unreasonable?

Not saying he's right per se, but the logic is sound.
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He's right but he's also deflecting. Devs can be shit at optimizing(which they are) while also the game engine can be utter garbage (which it is).

It's the perfect storm of shit,devs that can't optimize for the life of them and an engine that sucks more frames than kirby does enemies.
 
Gaiff said:
The logic isn't sound. Remember The Matrix demo built by Epic engineers to showcase the power of the engine? Now, it runs at like three times the frame rate of when it was first released because of all the optimizations done at the engine level. If internal engineers tasked with making a slice of gameplay demo couldn't get it to run optimally, then no way will a dev team that has to make a full game be able to.

UE5 came in way too early to cash in on the next-gen hype and we suffered for it. 5.4 is when the engine really started coming into its own, but that's fairly recent and most projects started on much older and poorly optimized builds and porting to newer versions isn't exactly cheap or quick for projects that are far along into their timetables.

I don't disagree the developers are also at fault, but the tools they were given just plain sucked until recently. Sure, an extremely experienced and talented developer can still work with that, but most cannot.
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What I took away from what he said, is that developers should focus on optimisation much more before going all out building the all the content.

That doesn't sound unreasonable at all, imo. It's a different approach to doing full-focus on optimisation at the and of the cycle.

So maybe instead of having a game with 150+ hours worth of content across 5 different biomes with optimisation issues, you might end up with 75+ hours of content across 3 different biomes but much better performance overall.
 
Killjoy-NL said:
Is it me, or are people attacking him just because, as he seems to point out that developers start optimising too late into the development-cycle, which doesn't sound unreasonable?

Not saying he's right per se, but the logic is sound.
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He's not entirely wrong, but that does not account for all the problems. When games by many entirely different studios using the same engine have the exact same issues (like traversal stuttering) then it's the engine.

Tim will probably point out that these issues have been improved or fixed on the latest version, but most games releasing now are using much older builds and the improvements will be seen months if not years down the line. When it smells like the engine and tastes like the engine, it's the engine.
 
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FeralEcho said:
He's right but he's also deflecting. Devs can be shit at optimizing(which they are) while also the game engine can be utter garbage (which it is).

It's the perfect storm of shit,devs that can't optimize for the life of them and an engine that sucks more frames than kirby does enemies.
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Fair enough, I wasn't trying to say UE is perfect, just that he does have a point.
 
He's basically saying Unreal Engine 5 is a pain in the ass. Which is what I always figured. It's taking longer than the console generation for the developers to educate themselves.
 
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Animation Lying GIF


So why does their own game, Fortnite, still perform so poorly? It must be down to their own developers then.
 
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It's all the developers fault yet when improvements are made to performance and stuttering on an engine level, Epic are keen to advertise that. Curious.
 
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