The Game Republic Great Northern Games Discord monthly AMA, featuring Huey Games Rob Hewson (CEO & Creative Director), James Easton (Senior Programmer) and Adam Grimley (Senior Programmer) shared practical advice on what developers should be considering when porting their game. With decades of combined industry experience, their message was clear, successful porting starts much earlier than most developers think. The free Discord chat formed part of Game Republic’s activities for 2026 supported by Official Partners Red Kite Games, Xsolla and Double Eleven. Here are some of the key points from the session that we wanted to share…
“If we can help to point people in the right direction so that everything’s easier down the line, whether we end up working together or not, I think it’s just beneficial to everyone.” – Rob Hewson
Why Game Developers Should Optimise Early Rather Than Later
One of the biggest issues porting teams encounters is poor optimisation. As senior programmers, James and Adam both agreed that asset store art, untrimmed engine packages, and bloated builds can dramatically increase porting time and cost for a project. Advising things like artwork, using LOD systems, testing on lower powered hardware and removing unused engine features and packages can all help to optimise a project.
“The more work you put in early doors in the development of your game, the quicker it will be ported, the better the result will be. Simplify your branch structure before porting starts. Make sure that every single bit of your source control is tidy and if you’re not using source control, use source control.” – James Easton
Other areas noted as being essential were that of console constraints and the performance expectation surrounding these, stressing once again the importance of optimising and setting expectations to avoid the potential for future issues or increased costs.
How to Avoid Technical Pitfalls When Porting and Why Engines Matter
Speaking to Unity developers in the audience, the team strongly recommended avoiding the deprecated Resources system and switching to Addressables or Asset Bundles. In some cases, using Resources can even block console certification. The team agreed that strong source control practices are critical for any project. Coupled with clean branch structure and organised repositories results in a porting process that is far smoother. Additionally, the complexity and tight regulations surrounding console compliance and online systems are often overlooked or underestimated, something that developers should be mindful of.
“There’s a lot you can do with Unreal in terms of optimisation. Unreal will do so much for you, a lot of which you probably don’t need. You can take parts out of the engine that you don’t need if you want to speed up the runtime. The same is true of Unity. A lot of the time you’ll have loads of packages inside Unity that you just don’t need. They’ll be running in the background or just bloating your builds. You really, really don’t need. All of that will go towards helping performance.”– James Easton
When asked the difference between various engines and support offered by them, the team identified Unreal and Unity often being the go-to choice for developers, with both offering built in console support. Whilst developers can use any number of engines, caution was aired that some engines can require additional effort due to limited console integration, resulting in porting becoming technically demanding and expensive. Overall, it was agreed that developers should use whichever engine they see fit, providing they’re aware of additional steps that maybe involved for certain processes later down the line.
“The number of games that we take in that haven’t really thought through every single thing with things like Gamepad, UI and gameplay can create a large volume of work, very quickly. It’s such a simple thing when you’re in the game design stage to do, thinking through those things at that stage can make all the difference later on.” – Adam Grimley
Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways
With the session drawing to a close, several points that stood out at helping developers to build early success when porting were clear. Leaving performance work until the end is a hard pass, starting at the beginning helps to streamline processes, avoid both delays and cost increases. By following these guidelines and setting realistic expectations in terms of hardware constraints developers can build steps towards successfully porting your game.
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