History of the Unreal Engine: From 1998 to Unreal Engine 5

More Than 25 Years of Unreal Engine

Hardly any software has shaped game development like the Unreal Engine. What began in 1998 as the technology behind a single shooter is now one of the most widely used game engines in the world, and has long since found use in film, architecture, and real-time visualization. This article gives an overview of the engine's evolution, its most important games, and what makes the current version so special.

The Engine

The Unreal Engine is developed by Epic Games and is a widely used game engine for designing, programming, and finishing video games. It is free to use in principle. A license fee only applies once you achieve commercial success: for games, Epic charges a 5 percent revenue share, and only above a lifetime revenue of one million US dollars per product.

A hallmark of the engine is visual scripting with Blueprints. Instead of writing code in a programming language, you connect so-called nodes into logic. This significantly lowers the barrier to entry. Models can also be rigged directly in the engine, and lighting is easier to implement than in some other engines.

The History

The Unreal Engine first appeared in 1998, developed by Epic Games for the shooter of the same name. Just two years later came a revised version that made games possible for consoles like the Dreamcast and the PlayStation 2. Large parts of the code were replaced and many new features added.

With Unreal Engine 2 in the early 2000s, development for the Xbox became possible, along with an improved rendering engine and, for the first time, support for 64-bit operating systems. In 2006, Unreal Engine 3 followed with numerous innovations that made developers' work easier. Unreal Engine 4 took until 2014, but then impressed with improvements across the board and compatibility with current hardware.

Since 2022, developers have worked with Unreal Engine 5. It offers cutting-edge tools for game development, above all the photorealistic real-time lighting Lumen, the virtualized geometry system Nanite, and the character tool MetaHuman for digital humans.

Games Made With the Unreal Engine

Over the years, a long list of well-known games has been built with the Unreal Engine. The genre classic Deus Ex appeared in 2000, followed by a Harry Potter game series from 2001. In 2007, BioShock impressed with its dark underwater setting, and between 2009 and 2015 the acclaimed Batman Arkham series relied on the engine. In 2016 the multiplayer horror game Dead by Daylight was released, and in 2017 Fortnite launched as one of the most successful games ever, later moving to Unreal Engine 5.

By now the list of Unreal Engine 5 titles is long: major productions such as Black Myth: Wukong, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, Senua's Saga: Hellblade II, and the remake of Silent Hill 2 show what the engine is capable of today.

Unreal Engine in Real Projects

The Unreal Engine is no longer just a tool for games but a platform for all kinds of interactive real-time applications. This is exactly where we come in at Studio Merkas, using it to develop games, visualizations, and interactive experiences. If you are planning a project that could benefit from the power of the Unreal Engine, get in touch with us. For how other engines approach the same tasks, see our articles on the Source Engine, CryEngine, and Frostbite Engine.