I stopped when they kept banning me for quitting a game because it would not connect my friend either.

They never removed it from Steam? I've been playing it on there since 2015. If you bought it there, you have it. Even works on Linux with Proton.

Idk dude I'm still playing it on steam pretty regularly? Ive got some weird auto-generated username which I guess comes from an epic account made for me but I never had to do anything it just works fine

It’s still decently popular with an active esports scene. It had a resurgence just a couple months ago when some big variety streamers like Jynxzi and critikal played it.

If you bought the game on Steam before it was removed, you can still play it through Steam (it’s what I do)

Apparently this was the UE6 announcement as well.

UE3 is already 22 years old. It has been end-of-life for 11 years.

As someone with 4500+ hours into this game, its time to move on from UE3.

On PC, this would enable modders and map builders with more tools. Plus UE4 is EOL and afaik won't be receiving updates, while the game will.

I don't know what they did, but in the last year that 'smooth as butter' turned to randomly lagging and frame spike.s

Whether they call it Unreal Engine 5.9 or 6 doesn't really matter in regards to fixing UE's issues. At some point they'll make the version jump.

That's not to say they'll definitely fix the issues in UE 6 though. I guess we'll see.

Epic doesn't think its a problem. Epic treats bad performance in UE5 like Nintendo treats JoyCon drift. Except in this case, a lot of performance problems in UE5 come from dveelopers not changing the default values of a lot of technologies, or being lazy and using technologies they dont need to use but they are the default or are easier to use than the technology that is a better fit for their use case. Epic causes a lot of it throught their implementation in the engine, but developers absolutely could be doing more to mitigate it.

Like, sure it might be easier to use the handle of a saw to hammer in a nail because it is already in their hand, but if they would just reach over to the toolbox and grab the hammer, its going to be a much better tool for the job.

They abandoned steam for a payout from Epic, at this point it's expected that there's incentive to promote their partner / owner.

People have been asking for an engine update for quite a while. There are certainly more pressing issues, like the ones you highlighted, but UE5 has been a request since Psyonix still had a soul.

Well 6 is probably stable in comparison to 5. Devs have been complaining about UE5 for a while.

I've been running it on Linux for a few years now. The performance is better than Windows.

The anti cheat feature might not matter to you, but at higher ranks it ruins the game to run into bots at every corner.

I just need them to do the "Authenticating" bit much faster. 3 seconds was already way too long to be joining a match, but now with the authentication step it can sometimes be upward of 15 second, which is an eternity in RL play.

I can still play it perfectly fine with 80+ FPS on Steam Deck.

I disagree. Why would you not need a anti-cheat in a competitive game. As long as it's not intrusive it's fine.