Unreal Engine 5 isn’t the problem—it’s the symptom. That’s the blunt assessment from Denis Dyack, whose studio, Apocalypse Studios, has navigated engine shifts from Amazon Lumberyard to Epic’s UE5. In a recent two-hour interview, Dyack traced the current wave of under-optimized AAA games not to the engine’s limitations, but to an industry under siege: crumbling pipelines, vanished mid-sized studios, and a race to ship content at the expense of performance.
The issue, he argues, is one of scale. Teams of 300 or more, each siloed into specialized roles—optimizing blades of grass while neglecting broader systems—create a fragmented development process where oversight is nearly impossible. Worse, the industry’s talent pool is thinning. Many studios now employ developers with just two to five years of experience, lacking the institutional knowledge to tackle deep optimizations. It’s not the engine’s fault, Dyack says. It’s the state of the industry.
A $2 billion deal that never happened has left scars deeper than most realize. In May 2023, Embracer Group’s proposed merger with Savvy Group collapsed, sending the publisher’s stock into freefall. The fallout wasn’t just financial—it was existential. Embracer was forced to liquidate studios, shelving projects and flooding the market with half-finished prototypes that had already consumed tens of millions in development costs. Publishers, desperate for polished content, snapped up these demos, leaving independent studios—already struggling to compete—with no viable path forward.
Fifty to 70% of independent and mid-sized developers are gone, Dyack states. And they weren’t new teams. These were studios with decades of history, wiped out in a matter of months. The ripple effect persists: publishing slots filled with Embracer’s discarded prototypes, while smaller studios starved for opportunities. For Dyack, the result is a broken ecosystem where optimization takes a backseat to cramming in more content—a gamble that often leaves players with unplayable frame rates.
Deadhaus Sonata: A tarot-driven experiment in early access
Amid the industry’s turmoil, Apocalypse Studios is pressing forward with Deadhaus Sonata, a game that blends gothic horror with tarot mechanics. A demo is now available on Steam, and an early access launch is targeted for later this year at $19.99. The initial release will focus solely on the vampire class, but the roadmap extends over 18 months, with plans to add
- 7 total playable classes, including werewolves and witches.
- New areas, dungeons, and towers, with hundreds of tarot cards and inscriptions to unlock.
- Community tools for generating dungeons, campaigns, and even custom boss fights.
- Social features, from text chat to voice chat, integrating player-created content into the game world.
The full version will adopt a free-to-play model, monetized through cosmetics—a shift Dyack believes aligns with modern player expectations. But the real experiment lies in the community-driven content pipeline. If successful, it could offer a lifeline to smaller studios: a way to compete in an industry where polished prototypes now command the spotlight.
The engine isn’t the villain—but the industry needs a reset. Dyack’s frustration isn’t with Unreal Engine 5’s capabilities, but with an environment where studios prioritize shipping over sustainability. The Embracer collapse was the catalyst, but the rot had set in long before. For now, games like Deadhaus Sonata may offer a glimpse of what’s possible when developers reclaim control—one tarot card, one community-generated dungeon, at a time.
