Reason
First, Unity offers LTS versions that provide ongoing support, patches, and stability fixes for certain older versions. This makes it easier for developers to use those versions with confidence, knowing they can trust them for commercial projects. I enjoy Unity’s LTS versions; they make game collaboration and maintenance easier.
The same doesn’t apply to Unreal; Unreal doesn’t have an LTS system. Instead, only the latest patch is supported, and it doesn’t receive meaningful updates after release, if at all.
This is very inconvenient for some developers who, when encountering a severe recurring crash cause or bug, will have to update to a newer version of Unreal to have a chance of resolving the issue, and with it, being required to deal with all the hassle that comes with migrating to a higher version.
Some things I’ve thought of
Are there economic constraints that prevent Unreal from maintaining LTS? They are a very rich, well-off company with a strong moat in publicly accessible, fast, photorealistic, real-time rendering, so I doubt financial constraints.
Are there technical back-end limitations that don’t work well with LTS? I’m not familiar with how Unreal’s backend works, so this might be a factor.
Are they understaffed on back-end devs?
I’m curious why this is the case and why we haven’t received an LTS system; it seems like it would be much better for every developer. Also, please explain why Unreal hasn’t done it yet.