alt Hacker NewsThere are many studios with their own engines that rival or exceed UE5 - which seems overhyped, because at this point they caught up with graphics fidelity without terrible performance that dread a lot of UE5 titles.
Recent notable example is Crimson Desert, they spent years building their own engine for this game and IMO they raised the bar when it comes to creating a huge realistic world.
Others that come to my mind are Decima and RE Engine.
As a Korean freelancer, I’ve spoken with former developers from Pearl Abyss. They officially work 10 to 7, but the relentless crunch culture drives most people out.
While the company is extremely proud of its proprietary engine, I was told it causes severe internal politics. The studio is heavily biased toward the engineers who built the engine. Another huge downside is the lack of documentation—you can't just Google your bugs. (Granted, this was the situation two years ago).
The CEO is famously known in Korea for prioritizing developers while devaluing writers and planners. However, even within that developer-first environment, the proprietary engine has birthed a clear internal hierarchy among the programmers