Adding some extra context here, shadows add 8.5ms to the frame render time alone, which is insane since that leaves only approx. 8ms to render the rest of the frame if we are trying to hit 60fps. (the game barely hits 60fps on our high-end hardware testing scenario and barely 30fps on our low-end hardware testing scenario). We only found out about the performance regression with shadows after we submitted, since we were literally crunching to get our game into a playable state with literally less than a minute to spare before submitting.