I wouldn’t say it’s quite as simple as that. It wasn’t always a linear downward trend. First couple of generations of video games were pretty terrible from a game development perspective. No disrespect to the developers or anything. Of course, they were amazing programs that took a lot of clever engineering to work, but still not very good games.

The really good games started coming out somewhere in the late '90s, I think? Then reached the peak in either 2000s or 2010s. From there, it’s been pretty much a downward trend. Most games in 2026 are so basic and shallow mechanically. AAA games are essentially semi-interactive tech demos.

Yeah, like pretty much all computers nowadays. But nobody wants to combine that with cloud gaming for a total of 500ms input lag.

For all the hate we’ve given Creation Engine over the years… I think we can all agree it’s still infinitely better than Unreal will ever be.

Good. Fuck em.

Literally my first thought as I was reading the post. Then I see this as the first comment.

Of course it’s possible. Just not financially viable, according to corporate logic. It’s not about profit. It’s about ever increasing profit. So what do you do when the sales have reached their peak and stopped increasing? Lower the production costs and/or increase prices.

I’ve worked in the video game industry for a few years, both at and with large corporations as well as smaller studios. Game optimization has rarely, if ever, been a concern for anyone. Usually, as long as the fps only occasionally drop to 25 on high-end systems - it’s good enough.

To be clear, smaller game studios care significantly more about optimization/accessibility. There’s no denying that. However, with their limited resources, sometimes there’s not a whole lot they can do.

What you’re asking for is completely reasonable and would be great. But it’s just not gonna happen. Most studios prefer Unreal, because it lets them outsource a lot of work to India, and potentially cuts the development time ever so slightly.

A lot of people say that the price increases will force developers to optimize and to work with what hardware they have to make good games and stop using AI gen and DLSS tech as an excuse for poor optimization.

The main problem with this is simply that it won’t happen. Every company would have to spend more on their games for no monetary gain, while their competition likely won’t do the same.

Not to mention, big game companies already have insanely powerful hardware, so it doesn’t impede the development in the slightest.