Major Game Studios Continue to Use Their Own Engines

Alan Wake 2 is often cited as evidence that a proprietary engine makes a game special: Remedy's dark atmosphere was built on Northlight, not Unreal Engine 5. This evokes nostalgia for the times when each studio had its own technology. But those times haven't gone anywhere, and the past tense here sounds strange.

Proprietary engines haven't disappeared

GTA 6 is running on RAGE, which debuted in Rockstar Presents Table Tennis in 2006. Capcom has been releasing almost all games on RE Engine since Resident Evil 7. Doom: The Dark Ages and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle are built on id Tech. EA keeps Battlefield on Frostbite, Ubisoft released Assassin's Creed Shadows on Anvil and Star Wars Outlaws on Snowdrop. Most PlayStation studios work on their own engines, including Guerrilla's Decima.

It's more related to artistic direction than the tool. Silent Hill 2, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Split Fiction, and Black Myth: Wukong are made on UE5 and yet don't resemble each other. Catherine by Atlus was built on Gamebryo, the same engine as Fallout 3, while Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection and Dragon's Dogma 2 run on the same RE Engine. The only recognizable image comes from Lumen, UE5's lighting system, but it's also customized.

Why switch to Unreal

The reason is money and personnel. CD Projekt RED, after the disastrous release of Cyberpunk 2077, admitted that training newcomers to work with REDengine takes too much time and moved The Witcher 4 to UE5 in partnership with Epic. In 2024, Halo Studios also switched to Unreal. The downside: developers have become interchangeable – previously, experience with a unique engine protected against layoffs, now almost any contractor knows Unreal.

A proprietary engine is not a panacea either

Bethesda uses the Creation Engine, which stems from Gamebryo, and Starfield was criticized for outdated graphics. The studio can't change the technology: modding, physics, and items that have been left where the player placed them for years depend on it. Capcom shows that investments in its engine pay off with hits, although the RE Engine struggles in the open world of Dragon's Dogma 2. After the scandal with Unity's installation fees in 2023, the monopoly of one engine scares many.