You just touched on the problem, which is a confluence of Base Rate Neglect and Availability Bias.

UE is the most popular gaming engine, so it’s used on the most projects and has a high amount of visibility. No matter which engine you build a game with, there are many factors to keep in mind for performance, compatibility, and stability. The engine doesn’t do that for you.

One problem is that big studios build games for consoles first, since it’s easiest to build for predictable systems. PC then gets ignored, is minimally tested, and patched up after the fact. Another is “Crysis syndrome”, where developers push for the best graphics they can manage and performance, compatibility, and stability be damned - if it certifies for the target consoles, that is all that matters. There is also the factor of people being unreasonable about their hardwares capabilities, expecting that everything should always be able to run maxxed out forever… and developers providing options that push the cutting edge of modern (or worse, hypothetical future) hardware compounds the problem. But none of these things have anything to do with the engine, but what developers themselves make on top of the engine.

A lot of the responses to me so far have been “that’s stupid because” and then everything after “because” is related to individual game development, NOT the engine. There is nothing wrong with UE, but there are lots of things wrong with game/software development in general that really should be addressed.

Exactly. It’s not the engine, it’s what you do with the engine.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/developer-interviews/layers-of-fear-reimagines-horror-with-unreal-engine-5

Also, “I don’t know what I’m talking about, so your list is invalid” isn’t the dig you seem to think it is.

Right. So it’s not the engine, but what you do with it.

So it’s because the developers paid attention to optimization and polish to ensure the game ran well on the largest number of devices.

My point exactly. It’s not the engine, it’s what you do with it and how you do it.

I tried it again recently and starts out tolerable but gets worse the bigger your city gets, even when you lower settings. It would be one thing if the game looked amazing and had these deep, detailed simulations… but it just looks okay and the digital corner-cutting trickery becomes obvious when you start looking closely. I feel like there is something fundamentally wrong under the hood of Skylines 2.

So what you’re saying is that Tekken being a fighting game just magically made a “bad engine” run well?

Fortnite, Wukong, Tekken 8, Layers of Fear, Firmament, Everspace 2, Dark and Darker, Abiotic Factor, STALKER 2, Jusant, Frostpunk 2, Satisfactory, Expedition 33, Inzoi, Immortals of Aveum, Starship Troopers: Extermination, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, Lords of the Fallen, Robocop, Myst (UE5 remake), Riven (UE5 remake), Palworld, Remanant 2, Hellblade 2, Subnautica 2… and the list keeps growing.

When a big studio skips QA and releases a broken game, it’s not the engine’s fault, it’s the studios fault. As long as consumers tolerate broken games that can maybe be fixed later (if we’re lucky) then companies will keep releasing broken, unfinished, unpolished, untested games. Blaming UE5 is like blaming an author’s word processor for a poorly written novel.

Can we please stop blaming UE5 for sloppy development and poor QA?

That game is called Arena. It was the first Elder Scrolls game.