Unreal Engine 5 is widely considered a revolutionary tool in game development. It gives developers and studios of all sizes the platform to create AAA-level visuals and gameplay. There are numerous advanced features and assets available to users free of charge. Despite all the praise, however, gamers have been constantly complaining about the performance issues with UE5 titles. Many games have been bombarded with negative or mixed reviews in recent years, and most of them are related to poor optimization.This article will help you understand what might be going wrong and why many Unreal Engine 5 games do not run well on PC.Why Unreal Engine 5 games often struggle on PCRecently, a popular X user, @SynthPotato, highlighted that several big games made in UE5, such as Mafia The Old Country, Metal Gear Solid 3 remake, and Oblivion Remastered, faced serious optimization issues. He made a really interesting statement in his post:"How is it possible that running decently has become the exception not the rule?"Similarly, other popular games, such as Killing Floor 3 and Wuchang Fallen Feathers, also have thousands of negative reviews on Steam for the same reasons.One thing worth noting is that Unreal Engine 5 is capable of making well-optimized games that could run well even on medium or low-spec PCs. Games like Clair Obscur Expedition 33, Split Fiction, and Tekken 8 are some examples of really well-optimized games developed on the same engine. While it's hard to answer why many other games run poorly, there are a few possible causes.Nanite and Lumen are very demandingNanite (global illumination) and Lumen (vistulized geometry) are UE5’s biggest features. These features offer highly detailed environments and real-time lighting. While they look amazing, they also put a heavy load on both the GPU and CPU. These features are really powerful, but not always ready for large-scale games. Smaller games often avoid relying on these experimental features heavily.Frame pacing issuesUnreal Engine 5 has unique techniques that render over multiple frames, such as the Temporal Super Resolution. If the frame pacing is not consistent, it results in constant stutters even when the average FPS looks fine. UE5 is still evolving, and developers often run into engine bottlenecks.Business pressuresHigh-budget AAA games are usually tied to fiscal quarters, marketing campaigns, and investors. Unreal Engine 5 comes with profiling and debugging tools to address performance issues. However, optimization comes late in dev cycles, so when the deadline hits, performance issues remain, and games are often released in a "good enough" state.In conclusion, Unreal Engine 5 can deliver smoother performance, and we have seen it happen multiple times, but many AAA games suffer as they chase cutting-edge visuals and release the game before the deadline.Read more articles here:Marvel Rivals shifted to UE5 due to a significant technical hurdle in 2019Steam Deck vs. Nintendo Switch 2: Cyberpunk 2077 graphics and performance comparisonWhat is Stop Killing Games? Controversy surrounding game preservation explored