Paulo Souza

Paulo Souza

Game Development

  • Studio Leadership
  • Account Executive
  • Developer Relations
  • Technical Marketing
São Paulo, Brazil
CONTACT ME ↓

Hey, I'm Paulo.

I spent 11 years at Epic Games, building developer relations across Latin America, closing engine licensing deals as Business Development Manager and lately as Technical Account Manager, nurturing direct relationships with senior executives at AAA studios.

Before Epic, I ran Playlore Gameworks as studio head and shipped the first real-time 3D sports game to launch on social networks and a mobile game featured on the AppStore in over 100 countries. Before Playlore, I was a co-founder at Preloud Studios.

I'm in São Paulo now, working on my own projects and looking for what's next.

A bit more about me ↓
Work
Epic Games 2015 — 2026 · Brazil + Canada
  1. 2024 — 2026

    Technical Account Manager

    Scope
    Technical relationships with a portfolio of top North American studios: WB Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Crystal Dynamics, Eidos.
    Did
    Ran recurring technical reviews with studio tech directors at VP level, drove project on-sites, tracked project health, engine adoption, and surfaced friction to UE support and product teams.

    Also prototyped and led the creation of a system that replaced fragmented Google Sheets tracking across Epic's partner organizations.

    Result
    Directly involved in shipping 4 titles successfully and hitting performance targets.

    Account Management system deployed across Epic Games; on track to replace an internal Salesforce deployment.

    Domain
    • Account Management
    • Developer Relations
    • Unreal Engine
    • AAA Studios
    • Technical Strategy
  2. 2022 — 2024

    Business Development Manager

    Scope
    Business development across the top 20 game studios in North America: Crystal Dynamics, Avalanche Studios, Norsfell, and others.
    Did
    Built executive relationships, drove licensing and royalty negotiations, and coordinated technical strategy between studios and the engine team.
    Result
    $10M in revenue within 18 months. $8M+ in engine licenses, $1.5M in royalties recovered.
    Domain
    • Business Development
    • Account Executive
    • Deal Closing
    • Unreal Engine
  3. 2015 — 2022

    Tech Evangelist + LATAM Lead

    Scope
    Epic's Latin America developer relations function, built from scratch. Responsible for identifying target studios, driving engine adoption, and technical enablement across the region.
    Did
    Hired and led a regional team. Converted the top studios in the region to Unreal Engine. Led development of the ActionRPG sample project. Produced technical content (talks, workshops, tutorial series) totaling over 1.7M views on Unreal Engine's YouTube channel.
    Result
    80% of top LATAM studios converted to Unreal Engine. ActionRPG became one of the most downloaded UE samples ever released.
    Domain
    • LATAM
    • Developer Relations
    • Technical Marketing
    • Business Development
    • Unreal Engine
    • Team Leadership
    • Content Production
Playlore Gameworks 2007 — 2014 · Producer + Studio Head · Brazil
Scope
Turn a co-dev art-only team into a full game development studio. Production organization of up to 50 people across three online games, from concept through live service.
Did
Managed production managers and technical leads across the full lifecycle. Helped secure $4M+ in funding across multiple rounds. Partnered with analytics and business intelligence to drive product and go-to-market decisions.
Result
Three shipped online titles + live service operations. Shipped the first real-time 3D sports game to launch on social networks and a mobile game featured on the AppStore in over 100 countries.
Domain
  • Studio Leadership
  • Production
  • Live Service
  • Fundraising
  • Mobile
  • Team Management
Preloud Studios 2001 — 2007 · Co-Founder · Brazil
Scope
Game studio, no outside funding. Worked across design, programming and production from concept to launch.
Did
Set company strategy, led business development, and managed the leadership team. Hands-on across design, code and production on every title.
Result
Eight commercial games shipped for PC and consoles.
Domain
  • Founder
  • Game Design
  • Business Development
  • Production
  • C++
  • Consoles
Featured Work
Volumetric Navigation System Active · Personal

An extension to Unreal Engine's navigation framework for fully volumetric (3D) pathfinding, built for flying entities that need to navigate space, not just walkable surfaces. Built with the help of Claude Code as engineering partner.

In active development; technical writeup in progress.

  • Unreal Engine
  • C++
  • Navigation
  • Game AI
  • Claude Code
Composable Mesh Authoring Plugin Active · Personal

A non-destructive, stack-based mesh authoring system for Unreal Engine 5. Each actor owns one generator (Box, Cylinder, Ramp, SplineWall) and an ordered list of modifiers that compose into a procedural mesh — a lightweight Blender-style modifier stack, native to UE5, with C++ and Blueprint extension points. Custom viewport handles let artists drag dimensions directly in the editor.

Built to author level geometry without round-tripping to a DCC tool. Developed using Claude Code as engineering partner.

Replaced a Blueprint prototype with a typed C++ pipeline in a few days.

  • Unreal Engine
  • C++
  • Geometry Script
  • Agentic Workflow
  • Claude Code
UE5 Vehicle Template 2022 · Epic Games

The official Vehicle Template shipped with Unreal Engine 5.0, built from scratch.

Two fully drivable vehicle types (sports car and off-road), each with double wishbone suspension feedback via Control Rig, Chaos Vehicle physics tuned for distinct handling profiles, Enhanced Input integration, and a UMG HUD.

Models came from other Epic team members; the physics, rigging, input, and UI were entirely my work.

Ships with every Unreal Engine 5 installation as the default vehicle starting point.

  • Unreal Engine
  • Chaos Physics
  • Control Rig
  • Enhanced Input
  • Blueprints
  • UMG
ActionRPG Sample 2018 · Unreal Engine

A third-person action RPG sample project, built as an official Epic Games reference implementation for developers on UE4, targeting high-end mobile (Android / iOS).

I led development prototyping gameplay systems, converting Blueprint code to C++, implementing enemy AI via Behavior Trees, HUD and inventory UI flows, as well as profiling and performance optmization on mobile devices.

I also helped directly with the Gameplay Ability System integration, a data-driven item and ability system, and a save system. Shipped in 2018.

One of the most downloaded Unreal Engine samples ever released.

  • Unreal Engine
  • C++
  • Blueprints
  • Gameplay Ability System
  • Behavior Trees
  • Mobile
Neeon 2014 · Independent

A puzzle game for iPhone built in C++ and Objective-C, without an engine. The player swipes a block of light through 300+ levels with one goal: find the shortest path. Two modes, Classic (minimum moves for 3 stars) and Time-Attack (chain completions against a countdown).

Co-designed the game and implemented UI, achievements, and visuals.

Shipped on the App Store in 2014.

  • C++
  • iOS
  • Game Design
  • Puzzle
Downfall: Clash of Factions 2013 · Playlore

A free-to-play mobile strategy MMO for iOS: modern military theater, 20+ unit types, faction system, real-time alliance coordination, and cross-player raids. Led the studio of ~50 through full production in under a year, concept through launch and post-launch live service.

Featured on the App Store in over 100 countries and during the iPad 3 launch as the first online game with full retina display support.

  • iOS
  • Mobile
  • Strategy MMO
  • Live Service
  • Production
Speaking

1.7M Total views across all content

  • Unreal Engine AI with Behavior Trees 403K views

    Live coding session building a stealth-game enemy AI from scratch: Behavior Trees, Blackboard, AI Perception, and EQS. Became the industry reference talk for teaching AI for games in Unreal Engine.

    • Unreal Engine
    • AI
    • Perception System
    • Behavior Trees
    • EQS
  • Building Natural Environments in Unreal Engine 438K views

    Full pipeline for realistic outdoor scenes in UE4: Landmass Blueprint brushes for non-destructive terrain sculpting, Runtime Virtual Textures for water-edge wetness across all scene materials, and procedural foliage placement at landscape scale.

    • Unreal Engine
    • Landscape
    • Procedural Foliage
  • Lumen in UE5: Let There Be Light 408K views

    Technical deep-dive into Lumen's architecture: how it works, the systems that makes multi-bounce GI possible in real time, and the unified GI and reflections pipeline. Produced with the Lumen engineering team during UE5 early access.

    • Unreal Engine
    • Lumen
    • Global Illumination
    • Rendering
  • IGN — Unreal Engine 5: Lumen 195K views

    IGN's UE5 launch series, Episode 2. Appeared alongside Lumen's author as Epic's developer relations spokesperson, explaining real-time global illumination for a general audience.

    • Unreal Engine
    • Lumen
    • Global Illumination
    • Press
    • IGN.COM
  • Driving Around: Exploring Chaos Vehicles 180K views

    State of Unreal 2022. Full pipeline for wheeled vehicles in UE5: Blender mesh prep, Physics Asset setup, Control Rig suspension, and handling tuning.

    • Unreal Engine
    • Chaos Physics
    • Control Rig
    • Animation Blueprint
  • Profiling and Optimization in UE4 101K views

    Unreal Indie Dev Days 2019. CPU and GPU performance deep-dive covering the game / draw / GPU thread pipeline, focused on transferable mental models, not command lists.

    • Unreal Engine
    • Performance
    • Profiling
    • CPU
    • GPU
About

I love to build things. That's what drives me, and it's where I'm happiest. It started with modding Quake, Half-Life, and Unreal maps for LAN parties, which led to co-founding my first studio in the late 90s.

I co-founded Preloud when there were almost no studios in Brazil at the time, so we figured it out as we went, shipping multiple titles for PC, and consoles. I led creatively at first, then moved into publisher relationships and business development as the work demanded it.

I co-founded Preloud when there were almost no studios in Brazil at the time, so we figured it out as we went, shipping multiple titles for PC, and consoles. I led creatively at first, then moved into publisher relationships and business development as the work demanded it.

At Playlore, I helped turn a co-dev art shop into a full studio. We shipped the first real-time 3D sports game on social networks, and later, a mobile game featured on the App Store in over 100 countries.

Epic approached me after that. Unreal Engine 4 had just gone free and they wanted someone to plant their presence in LATAM. I was their first Brazilian hire. That tenure ended with an acquisition and the opening of Epic's first office on the continent.

The work I cared about most across those years was being genuinely useful to studios: getting Unreal running right for a team in Brazil, closing a deal that funded someone's next project, or knowing a AAA studio's codebase well enough to actually help. Developer relations done well is a form of production. You're managing a project that just happens to be someone else's game.

These days I'm spending more time building again. LLM-assisted workflows have changed what one person can get done, and it's pulled me back toward what I liked most in the first place.

I was made in Recife, Brazil. I'm currently in São Paulo, Brazil, and I'm open to what's next.

Contact
Email
paulo.souza > me.com
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/parsouza
Currently
São Paulo, Brazil
Made in
Recife, Brazil