Riot is moving Valorant to Unreal Engine 5 but there may not be a massive upgrade

Valorant, the competitive shooter being developed by Riot Games, is soon having an engine upgrade. The studio announced during Unreal Feast 2024 that the free-to-play live service experience will make the move to Unreal Engine 5, while also teasing at some future projects set in the same universe.

SVP and Head of Valorant development teams, Anna Donlon, came on stage to reveal the new engine upgrade at the presentation. Since its launch over four years ago, the shooter has been powered by Unreal Engine 4 (currently on version 4.27 to be specific).

"We have squeezed literally every ounce of everything we could get out of Unreal Engine 4, so now we make the move to UE5, and that is not an easy feat when your game is a live service game but it is necessary," says Donlon.

However, she was also quick to temper fan expectations over what sort of graphical or performance improvements this could deliver, at least in the beginning. She goes on to say that "this upgrade is not going to significantly change how Valorant looks or performs, at least not right away."

Unfortunately for fans, a release date for Valorant's Unreal Engine 5 update was not shared at the presentation, but we now know that work is underway for the transition.

At the same time, Donlon went on to tease Valorant fans of upcoming experiences, adding that Riot is "very excited what about UE5 can do for us in the future." The studio is seemingly working on ways to expand the Valorant universe too, aimed at delivering "new playable experiences."

While Donlon did not go into more details, the fanbase is already speculating that this could be single-player or cooperative missions to expand the lore, or perhaps take the agents into another genre like delivering an extraction shooter.