Hello everyone.
Recently I’ve faced a very complex and frustrating problem. I need to get a very specific version of Unreal Engine — 5.0 EA (the early UE5 version from 2021).
First, I checked the Epic Games Launcher, but this version is no longer available there. Then I found Epic Games’ official GitHub repository, where you can usually build almost any engine version by cloning the source, running Setup.bat in the project folder to download dependencies, and then compiling the engine.
However, around 2023 (as far as I understand), Epic had a service disruption: the servers that Setup.bat uses to download engine binaries and third-party dependencies were changed or removed. Because of this, Setup.bat now fails with a 403 Forbidden (WebException) error when trying to download dependencies.
After this issue appeared, Epic attached a new .xml file (Commit.gitdeps.xml) for release branches, pointing to updated assets on the new servers. Replacing this file works fine for released versions like 5.0.0, which I successfully built.
Unfortunately, not all engine versions received this update, and UE 5.0 Early Access never did, so it still cannot download its dependencies.
I’ve tried many things to fix this. I used the Commit.gitdeps.xml from the 5.0.0 release (it downloads, but the EA build fails with many compile errors). I tried to manually replace missing dependencies, but there are just too many of them and it quickly becomes unmanageable.
So at this point I’m honestly a bit stuck. Do you have any suggestions on what else I could try? Or maybe someone here still has this version installed locally?
I would be really, really grateful for any help or advice. Thank you very much🙏