Future Of MetaSounds

General Feedback & Requests
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1

Dear Epic,

With the recent layoffs, key Positions in the Audio Team responsible for MetaSounds have been cut. These were the Architects of a new audio system.

Since we have started a new Internal projects Pre Production and invested time into developing pipelines and tools for MetaSounds. Could you please let us know what the future holds for Unreal Engine Native Audio.

This is highly concerning for our team and we are wondering if we need to switch to Wwise or Some other middleware option.

Thanks,

Craig

2

I would also be interested in the future of metasounds. I find this very concerning. I‘m starting to work on a new project and a few years ago specifically switched to unreal because of metasounds, now I‘m concidering switching back to unity.

3

I asked Dan Reynolds on his YouTube video. He said there are still Audio Engineers at Epic that will keep UE audio running.

However i would also like an official statement from Epic with regards to their plans for MetaSounds and unreal engine audio:

here is the link to Dan Reynolds video:

4

Echoing above - this seems incredibly disheartening to see the layoffs among the Metasounds team. As someone who has invested heavily in Metasounds (and indeed advocates for UE as a result of the imaginative audio capabilities), does Metasounds have a future? Would be very grateful for some perspective from Epic

5

Hi @TC_C-Boy, @Goeral_Hero, @ganttmd87

First: I’m sorry this sat here for too long. This was a gap on our side that we’re going to improve, and I own that.

I’m Blair Bitonti, Director of Audio Engineering at Epic. Let me take your questions directly.

It’s no secret that we had layoffs this year, but the core of the audio engineering team is intact, including many of the engineers who stood up MetaSounds and who support it today. MetaSounds is not in maintenance mode, it is not being wound down, and it remains a key part of our plans for the future of UE Audio.

The strongest evidence I can offer is our changelog. 5.8 shipped on June 17, and by volume, it’s the largest audio release in the 5.x line. The public roadmap cards are the quickest way to see it all in one place:

https://www.unrealengine.com/roadmap - open the UE 5.8 tab and look at the Audio section.

Full release notes: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/unreal-engine/unreal-engine-5-8-release-notes

One big feature I wanted to draw your attention to is that our Audio Insights tooling is now Production Ready. We’ve heard the feedback that it’s difficult to debug the sound playback in your titles, and Audio Insights is our answer to that. Check it out in 5.8, or you can see a great presentation on it from Unreal Fest ‘26 here → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o96Ot2UP2xE

We are still very much supporting MetaSounds, but teams can also use middleware side by side if that works best for your team (AudioLink exists for exactly that).

I’m set up on the EDC forums, so if you ever have a technical question about MetaSounds, feel free to tag me. Several of us from the audio team will also be at GameSoundCon in Burbank on October 20–21 if you’re going. Please reach out if you’d like to connect on site!

Thanks for pushing on this, and again, sorry it took us this long.

- Blair Bitonti, Director of Audio Engineering, Epic Games