Riot Games has confirmed that they’re planning to move Valorant to Unreal Engine 5 in the near future, calling it a “necessary” change for the tactical shooter.
The announcement was made during the Unreal Fest Seattle 2024, with SVP and Head of VALORANT Studios Anna Donlon claiming that the dev team has already “squeezed literally every ounce of everything” that they could get from Unreal Engine 4.
However, for the time being, the engine upgrade won’t bring any noticeable changes to the title.
“This upgrade is not going to significantly change how Valorant looks or performs, at least not right away,” Donlon said in a statement.
Valorant fans have raised concerns about whether the upgrade to Unreal Engine 5 will render the game unplayable for players on lower-end systems, but with optimization options for the new engine being better than ever before, that might not be the case.
Riot Teases Possible PvE Game Mode for Valorant
Alongside announcing the move to Unreal Engine 5, Donlon also teased a possible PvE game mode for Valorant that the engine upgrade might bring to the game.
“There are many developers who are very excited about what UE5 can do for us in the future,” she said in a statement. “Maybe those devs are working on something I can’t talk about and maybe those devs are thinking about ways to expand the Val universe into new playable experiences.”
While it hasn’t been confirmed what the “new playable experiences” for Valorant might include, speculations have started brewing in the game’s community about a potential PvE game mode that can be made possible with the Unreal Engine 5 upgrade.
What these newly announced changes mean for the future of Valorant still remains to be seen.
