Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has blamed the developmental focus on top-tier hardware for the Unreal Engine 5 optimization issues seen in games.
During a media interview (via This Is Game) following his keynote at Unreal Fest 2025 in Seoul, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney addressed growing concerns over optimization issues plaguing games built in Unreal Engine 5. According to him, the root of the problem lies not solely with the engine itself, but with how many studios approach development. “Most developers begin by building for the highest-end hardware, then only in the final stages do they optimize and test for lower-spec devices,” he explained. “That late-stage approach is the key reason players experience performance problems.”
Sweeney acknowledged that optimization has always been one of the most difficult challenges in game development. However, he noted that the ideal process should start much earlier, before studios commit to massive content builds. Epic Games has two initiatives to help address the issue i.e. enhanced engine-level support and expanded developer education.
On the technical side, Epic Games plans to add more automated optimization tools within its game engine to reduce the heavy manual work that is traditionally required from the development team. Meanwhile, education efforts will stress that optimization cannot be left as an afterthought. “We want to instill the idea that optimization must be done early, not late,” Sweeney said, noting that Epic engineers may directly assist developers in some cases.
Nevertheless, Sweeney admitted that today’s games are vastly more complex than those of a decade ago, making optimization increasingly difficult to handle purely at the engine level. Instead, he sees it as a collaborative effort between engine makers and game studios. Taking lessons from its own Fortnite, Epic Games is integrating its own optimization know-how back into Unreal Engine, with the goal of ensuring smoother performance even on modest hardware.
Recently, it was reported that former Returnal developer Ari Arnbjörnsson has been working alongside CD Projekt Red to eliminate stuttering issues in Unreal Engine 5. Read about it here.
