“We squeezed literally every ounce of everything we could get out of UE4”; Anna Donlon announces that Valorant will move to Unreal Engine 5

What you need to know

Anna Donlon, head of Valorant Studios, took the stage at Unreal Fest 2024 in Seattle to announce that the competitive shooter is moving from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5.
Donlon also teased “totally hypothetical new playable experiences” for Valorant as part of the announcement.
The move to UE5 shouldn’t drastically change Valorant’s visuals or performance at first. Still, Donlon describes the change as necessary for the future of the game despite the difficulty of changing the engine of a live service game.

Among the speakers who took the stage during the opening session of Unreal Fest Seattle 2024 was Anna Donlon, EVP and Studio Head of Valorant. Donlon announced that developers Riot Games were porting the competitive first-person shooter live to Unreal Engine 5 and revealed other Valorant projects.

Unreal Festival Seattle 2024 | Opening session – YouTube

Look on it

Valorant, a hyper-competitive 5v5 tactical shooter, is not known for being a “graphics” game, which Donlan acknowledges during his presentation. “We wanted our game to be truly global,” Donlan said, “one that not only reflects and celebrates our global communities, but also supports them by running on machine specifications that sometimes feel downright uncomfortable.” Donlan credits Unreal Engine with providing an adaptable and flexible foundation, giving developers the freedom to focus on innovation rather than the game engine. She goes so far as to claim that without Unreal Engine, Valorant could not exist.

Donlan also shares that Valorant currently runs on Unreal Engine version 4.27. “We squeezed literally every ounce of everything we could get out of UE4, so now we’re moving to UE5,” Donlan said. Despite the engine’s technological advancement, the new upgrade is not expected to mark a radical change in Valorant’s visual fidelity or overall performance, but rather it should provide a foundation for future projects.

“Maybe these developers are working on something that I can’t talk about,” Donlan said. “Maybe these developers are thinking of ways to expand Val’s universe into new playable experiences. Maybe we feel very lucky to have everything UE5 has to offer at our disposal.”

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Screenshot of the Valorant Limited Beta running on Xbox Series X.

Valorant on Xbox “has no right to be this good,” says WC Staff writer Zachary Boddy. (Image credit: Windows Central)

Valorant was primarily designed as a PC game but launched on Xbox and PlayStation earlier this year. “A FPS on console? Sure. But a tactical shooter on console? Especially a game that’s trying to deliver the gaming experience that we are? We really couldn’t figure it out,” said Donlan. Donlan adds that if Valorant had been developed on a proprietary game engine for PC, console ports may not have happened, as Riot had never released a live service title on console.

According to Donlon, Unreal Engine’s support for multiple platforms offered features like rendering implementations and native platform input handling on one easily optimized engine. These features gave the development team the ability to focus on the core gameplay mechanics, anti-cheat, and other elements of Valorant rather than focusing on the porting process.

“Millions of players are now playing Val on console, and we owe a lot of that to our relationship with Unreal,” Donlan revealed. Valorant currently has 35 million players across all platforms.