China Becomes World’s Largest Unreal Engine Developer Community

Unreal Fest Shanghai 2025 Signals a Milestone: China Becomes World’s Largest Unreal Engine Developer Community

At the Unreal Fest Shanghai 2025 technology conference held in Shanghai in August, a landmark data point was revealed by Bill Clifford, General Manager and Vice President of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, during his keynote speech: China has surpassed the United States to become the country with the largest number of Unreal Engine developers globally. This milestone event signifies that China’s game and digital content industry has entered the top tier worldwide in terms of core technology application and talent pool.

In his speech, Bill Clifford noted that the growth rate of the Chinese developer community is “astonishing,” and its scale and vitality have become a key force driving the development of the Unreal Engine ecosystem. He stated, “We are seeing a passionate and creative community flourishing in China. From top-tier AAA games to innovative film and television production, Chinese developers are leveraging the powerful capabilities of Unreal Engine 5 to turn their imagination into reality and export it to the global market.”

Behind this achievement lies the strategic investment and deep application of Unreal Engine technology by China’s leading game companies over many years:

Tencent Games: As a strategic investor in Epic Games, Tencent is not only a user of the engine but also a co-builder of the ecosystem. Its flagship studios, such as TiMi Studio Group and Lightspeed Studio, have fully embraced Unreal Engine for developing highly anticipated major projects like Honor of Kings: World, aiming to create open-world and shooter games with global competitiveness.

NetEase Games: NetEase is also a pioneer in placing Unreal Engine at the core of its product lineup. Both the upcoming martial arts open-world title Where Winds Meet and the long-operating tactical competitive game Knives Out PC version demonstrate NetEase’s technical prowess in using the engine to construct vast scenes and achieve high-definition visual quality.

miHoYo: Known for its technology-driven artistry, miHoYo has deeply utilized Unreal Engine in its new title Zenless Zone Zero. The game’s excellent performance in visual stylization, character action expression, and urban scene construction confirms Unreal Engine’s immense potential in supporting diverse art styles and achieving “anime rendering” level quality.

Technology Empowers Art, Continuously Expanding Creative Boundaries

The industry widely recognizes that core technologies of Unreal Engine 5, such as the Nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry system and Lumen fully dynamic global illumination, are fundamentally changing the paradigm of game and digital content creation. They significantly lower the technical barrier for developers to achieve cinematic-quality visual effects, allowing teams to focus more energy on artistic creation and gameplay innovation itself.

A senior Technical Art Director attending the conference stated, “In the past, we needed to spend a great deal of effort on technical optimization to balance effects and performance. Now, tools like Unreal Engine 5 allow us to more directly ‘translate’ artistic concepts into the final presented effect. Technology and art are no longer a relationship of compromise, but truly complementary.”

Future Outlook: Beyond Gaming, an Ecosystem for Mutual Success

China’s leading number of developers is not only evident in the gaming sector but is also radiating to broader real-time 3D content creation industries such as architecture, automotive, and film and animation. With the continuous iteration of Unreal Engine technology and the bursting creativity of Chinese developers, more innovative applications and digital experiences born in China are expected to emerge on the world stage in the future.

China, one of the world’s largest gaming markets, now also boasts the largest Unreal Engine developer community. This indicates that, driven by both technological accessibility and the pursuit of artistry, the innovation wave in China’s digital content industry is entering a brand new phase.

About Unreal Fest:
Unreal Fest is a global series of technology conferences hosted by Epic Games. It aims to connect Unreal Engine developers, artists, and creators worldwide to share the latest technologies, workflows, and success stories. It is an annual gathering for the Unreal Engine community