Unreal Engine 3 Not to Blame for Midway’s Problems

While it may be cool and hip to put all the blame on Epic’s Unreal Engine, the company’s middleware tool is not the one which can be implicated in Midway’s rapid decline, with Ben Fritz of Variety clarifying his original story, stressing that the engine itself is not at fault.

“To be direct: my sources are not saying Unreal Engine, and Epic Games, are the cause of its problems,” Fritz wrote. “Rather it’s the decision by Midway to use UE3 for all its games, and subsequent problems adapting the code, which caused game delays and then cash flow problems.”

This move was taken by the publisher as a cost-cutting measure. Midway had wanted its studios to share resources more efficiently, but instead individual projects demanded adapting the engine to their specific needs.

This caused a problem for Midway as the projects got delayed due to complexity in coding. So, Midway pushed out games in a desperate bid for revenue, but that plan didn’t go so well either.