alt Hacker NewsThis is a really bad take, sorry.
1. Engine choice is only a factor in performance. If you build an unoptimised game it will run poorly. Doesn't matter if you do it in Unity or your own engine. 2. Terraria, etc did not succeed because they use their own engines. 3. Those bad performance games have bad performance and happen to use an engine, not the other way round. 4. The quality of your game has a lot more to do with effort, care, etc than the engine you choose to use. You can create a buggy piece of crap no matter how you make it 5. Performance alone is a bad reason to roll your own engine. "Existing engines are not performant so you should roll your own" is a very bad piece of advice. 6. Making a good engine is HARD and a lot of effort. There is no guarantee that you produce anything better because you chose that path.
I always argued for custom game engines not for performance but so your game “feels” unique. I can spot a unity or unreal game from miles away. They have a smell if you will that is very hard to escape.
Every game that has a custom engine just feels unique and interesting in a different way. I think this is why people likely push the custom engine. Any game that passes the finish line on a custom engine often has a level of craftsmanship you dont see in standard engines.
Oblivion remake while looking good only works because the underlying logic is the same. I personally do not like the visual feel of the remake as it screams asset pack to me.