Unreal Engine 5 performance issues are mainly due to devs not optimising properly, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says
Not enough studios optimise for less powerful hardware early in the development process, he claims
The CEO of Epic Games has suggested that some platforms struggle to run Unreal Engine 5 games because developers aren’t optimising them properly.
It’s been suggested in recent years that Unreal Engine 5’s demanding technical requirements can sometimes mean that running UE5 games on less powerful hardware can result in poor performance and sluggish gameplay.
Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney, who created Unreal Engine in the first place, says the reason for this isn’t necessary the fault of the engine itself, but the way developers are using it.
In a media roundtable interview during the latest Unreal Fest event in Seoul, South Korea, Sweeney was asked if Epic Games was doing anything to address claims of optimisation issues with Unreal Engine 5 games.
As reported by Korean website This is Game, Sweeney suggested that too many developers focus on making their games for the most powerful hardware then try to optimise for less powerful systems at the end of the development process, causing issues.
“The primary reason why Unreal Engine 5-based games don’t run smoothly on certain PCs or GPUs is the development process,” Sweeney explained (via machine translation). “Many developers develop games for high-end hardware, then perform optimization and testing on lower-spec devices in the final stages of development.
“Of course, optimization is by no means an easy task, it’s a very challenging one. Ideally, optimization should be implemented early in development, before full-scale content build begins. We are preparing two major solutions to address this issue.
“One is to strengthen Unreal Engine support. Optimization requires significant manual effort, so we plan to provide automated optimization features for various devices, making the process faster and easier for developers.
“The other is to strengthen developer training. In addition to providing education on the overall testing and optimization process, it’s crucial to raise awareness of the importance of early optimization. If necessary, our engineers can provide direct intervention to raise awareness of optimization techniques and provide technical assistance.
“However, compared to a decade ago, the complexity of games themselves has significantly increased, making optimization at the engine level a challenge. Consequently, game developers and engine developers like us are increasingly required to collaborate to solve these issues.
“We are actively incorporating the optimization technology and expertise we’ve accumulated while servicing Fortnite into Unreal Engine, and are working diligently to ensure the game runs smoothly even on low-spec PCs.”
