Valorant is moving to Unreal Engine 5, Will this affect players?

Head of Valorant Studios, Anna Donlon, recently revealed that Valorant will be making a move to Unreal Engine 5 soon. This decision was taken to ensure the longevity of the game while providing better updates to the game moving forward. As of now, the game uses Unreal Engine 4 which does limit the developers from exploring things.

“With Valorant currently on UE 4.27, the team has squeezed literally everything we could get out of UE4, so now we make the move to UE5,” Donlon explained. The move to Unreal Engine 5 will allow them to utilize latest features like Lumen, Nanite and others.

Anna Donlon has confirmed VALORANT will be moving to Unreal Engine 5

"This upgrade is not going to significantly change how VAL looks or performs, at least not right away" pic.twitter.com/1wXeIqJxEh

— Valorant News (@ValorINTEL) October 1, 2024

Game development is a complex process and can have issues while moving to a different engine or even a later version due to many things breaking in the process. Since the game is a live, the service title with constant updates and improvements, the task isn’t an easy one. The move will likely require much more work and may take some time compared to a single player making a switch in the game engine.

Also Read: Orangutan announces Valorant roster ahead of 2025 season

Will a switch to Unreal 5 affect current gamers?

Most gamers are already of low to medium end GPUs, and Valorant provides a perfect opportunity for them to play the game on high fps. Players who were worried about their performance tanking can rest easy, as their current GPUs will likely work fine for quite some time, as explained by Donlon.

Valorant is much more gameplay oriented rather than visuals, despite having a great art style. "Graphics will not see much change with their move to Unreal 5," she said. “Compared to other ambitious, big-budget productions with day-night cycles or sprawling worlds, Valorant doesn’t hold a candle. Instead, Unreal Engine helps in other ways, as Riot prioritizes player orientation,” she further added.

Another thing Donlon hinted was towards the expansion of the franchise with more games with different story-lines. League of Legends also saw multiple standalone franchises, and the same will be possible with Valorant too. Maybe players will also get single-player games with familiar faces.