Unreal Engine

Epic Games released UE 5.8 Preview on May 12, introducing experimental Mesh Terrain, MetaHuman Crowd scaling, a lighter Lumen mode targeting 60fps on handhelds, and MegaLights graduating to production status.

Epic Games lays off roughly 20 percent of its workforce, citing a Fortnite engagement downturn that began in 2025 and over $500 million in targeted cost savings.

GDC 2026 revealed a game engine industry converging on neural rendering: Microsoft added ML to DirectX shaders, Unreal shipped production Nanite foliage, Unity previewed unified GI, and Godot battled AI-generated pull request spam.