Games

To everyone saying it's a slip backwards for games, too, it's more complicated than that. It's absolutely possible to make a game that runs at more than 90 fps in UE5; I've done it in VR. The engine just makes it super easy to be lazy, and when you combine that with modern AAA "optimization is for suckers" game dev philosophy, that's where you get performance like Borderlands 4.

I think people only notice UE5 games running badly, and don't realize when it's fine. Clair Obscur was in UE5 and I never dropped below 60fps on max settings except in one area. Avowed was in UE5, probably a really early version like 5.2 or 5.3, based on when it released (the latest it could've been is 5.5, but it's bad practice to switch major engine versions too far into development, so I'd doubt they updated even to 5.4). Avowed had bugs for sure, but not performance issues inherent to the engine.

I think blaming UE5 lets lazy development practices off easy. I'll take it over Unity for sure (I've experienced Unity fail at basic vector math, let alone that no one should ever trust them again after that per-install fee stunt). We should be maintaining that same frustration at developers for not optimizing. Lumen was not ready when it came out, and Nanite requires a minimum hardware spec that's still absurd, but it's literally two switches to flip in project settings to turn those off. UE5 is really an incredible piece of technology and it has made, and continues to make, game making accessible on a scale comparable to when Unity added a free license. AAA developers get off easy when you blame the engine instead of their garbage code.

~Godot is a beautiful perfect angel that needs a new 3D physics engine~