Marvel Rivals devs defend Unreal Engine 5 as Epic’s tools are “essential for our creative vision”

Published:

10 April 2026

Last Updated: 10 April 2026

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Unreal Engine 5 is currently the most popular game engine in the industry with hundreds of games built on Epic Games’ tools. As some UE5 games have released in a less than ideal state, many gamers have turned against the engine, but Marvel Rivals developer NetEase explains the engine has been “essential”.

Marvel Rivals was initially built on Unreal Engine 4 during the early stages of development. The team moved to UE5 due to some major optimisations, allowing for the creation of Doctor Strange’s portal and even the game’s hyper-optimised destruction technology.

Alongside addressing the game’s mass of leakers and the game’s plan to move “beyond standard 6v6 PvP”, Marvel Rivals game director Guangyun Chen told FRVR that the pushback against UE5 isn’t deserved for every game.

“Unreal Engine 5 is essential for our creative vision, particularly for the environment destruction that defines Marvel Rivals,” the developer said. “While we understand the performance concerns, we believe the engine is the only way to achieve our ‘moving anime’ look and terrain-altering gameplay.”

While Unreal Engine 5 houses a number of games with performance issues, it also houses some of this generation’s most beloved titles. Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders, one of the most popular multiplayer games around right now, is built in the same engine, and many have praised the game for its performance. Similarly, Epic’s own in-house Fortnite runs remarkably well, at least for now.

Nevertheless, as a live-service game, the Marvel Rivals team told us that additional optimisations are coming to the game in the future. After major optimisations allowed the studio to bring their game to PlayStation 4, and soon Nintendo Switch 2, the team is constantly at work on improving performance on all platforms.

“We are constantly optimizing—as seen in our recent Beta toggles for mid-to-high-end CPUs—to ensure the engine’s power doesn’t come t the cost of accessibility,” the team told us, explaining that you can’t just use all of UE5’s features and expect it to just run well out of the gate.

As with any engine, Unreal Engine 5 has the potential to run really well while also offering some fantastic options for developers. Nanite, Lumen, and even Chaos Destruction are all fantastic options when used responsibly, and using all three at once is a very tall order for any hardware right now.

About The Author

Lewis White

Lewis White is a veteran games journalist with over a decade in the field. Starting with beloved Xbox website ICXM/XboxMAD, Lewis became the Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser before becoming the Editor in Chief of StealthOptional and Gfinityesports. Lewis later jumped to By Gamers For Gamers where he jumped to become EIC of VideoGamer and the host of the New VideoGamer Podcast prior to the website’s acquisition.

Over the years, Lewis has also seen long-form investigative pieces published in outlets such as Eurogamer, PCGamesN, Wireframe, Retro Gamer, Nintendo Life, and EDGE. Now, as the Editor in Chief of FRVR Blog, Lewis strives to bring the same level of quality journalism with interview-led content to the site in both written and audio form with the FRVR Podcast.

With a First Degree BA Hons in Games Journalism and Public Relations, Lewis has been a stable part of the British games press for over a decade, and has frequently displayed his love of Halo, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and other games pretty much everywhere he’s worked. And FRVR is no different.

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