# Unreal Engine 104 Hacker News commenters recommended Unreal Engine and 89 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. **Verdict:** A full-featured engine with strong lighting and authoring tools that artists can use, free until a game earns serious money; critics cite poor default performance and samey-looking games. ## Why people recommend it - Strong lighting and rendering (4 comments): "My production experience with Unreal has been solely limited to background and lighting support, for which it is excellent." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46703349)) "has lots of features based on SDFs that are used to great effect in games that run on consumer hardware" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47385165)) "One major advantage is that the cinematographer's main job, lighting design, gets easier" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46703274)) - Standard choice with big community (4 comments): "people who want to build games should absolutely use Unity, Unreal or Godot in no particular order" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47229190)) "Unity, Unreal, Monogame are a few engines via which ambitious games are regularly shipped." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46826889)) "the support and community around Godot, Unity and Unreal still make them a no-brainer" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49670037)) - Tools usable by artists, designers (3 comments): "With UE5 you get authoring tools up and down the stack, so your artists and storyboarders and level designers can all start creating the world" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47223624)) "UE5 seems to be user friendly enough that most of the game development can be carried out just by artists and game designers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48820678)) "the one thing game engines like unity or unreal get right IMO is having a pretty GUI for doing basic things" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46795549)) - Free until revenue threshold (3 comments): "it's kinda crazy that Epic lets you use UE for FREE until you start making serious money on the game that you made" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49196217)) "free up to $1mm in revenue. Anyone can go and download the engine and use it as much as they want free" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48859082)) "QNX should be licensed like Unreal Engine. If you ship enough products using it, it gets noticed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46398953)) ## What people warn about - Unoptimized performance by default (4 comments): "the engine went too far into cinema production, and making it a performant game engine requires code refactoring" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46703426)) "Crab Champions (UE4, have to use nonsense upscaling stuff that makes the game hideous just to maintain 60fps at 1920x1200)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48755263)) "Unreal Engine (5 almost specifically) is another example of things that are unoptimized by default, very easy to notice" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46234173)) - Games all look samey (3 comments): "every other game being made in Unreal Engine nowadays is one of the biggest contributing factors to them all feeling so samey" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49238068)) "These kinds of technologies that box film makers in are surely contributing to the boring same-y-ness of modern film and tv." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46708747)) "I can spot a unity or unreal game from miles away. They have a smell if you will that is very hard to escape." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48755796)) - Massive, complex, hard to customize (3 comments): "Trying to do open-world in UE3 required making some fairly invasive and substantial changes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48758418)) "Unreal’s abstractions are not always great - some things are abstracted to hell and back" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48828679)) "Unreal 5 is massive and complex, and there comes a point where it takes longer to understand how to layer on your own customizations than just to start from scratch." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48825104)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Godot](https://hackerapproved.com/p/godot.md): 213 recommend - [Unity](https://hackerapproved.com/p/unity.md): 110 recommend - [Bevy game engine](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bevy.md): 50 recommend - [id Tech engine](https://hackerapproved.com/p/id-tech-engine.md): 26 recommend - [S&box](https://hackerapproved.com/p/s-box.md): 14 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.unrealengine.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Unreal Engine", https://hackerapproved.com/p/unreal-engine/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).