What you need to know
- Valorant Studios head Anna Donlon took the stage at Unreal Fest 2024 in Seattle to announce 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 switch to UE5 is not expected to change Valorant's visuals or performance at first dramatically. Still, Donlon describes the switch as necessary for the game's future despite the difficulty of changing a live service game's engine.
Among the speakers to take the stage during the opening session of Unreal Fest Seattle 2024 was Anna Donlon, the SVP and studio head of Valorant. Donlon announced that the developers at Riot Games are porting the competitive, live-service first-person shooter to Unreal Engine 5 and teased additional Valorant projects.
Valorant, a hyper-competitive, tactical 5v5 shooter, is not known for being a "graphics-forward" game, which Donlan acknowledges during her presentation. "We wanted our game to be truly global," said Donlan, "One that not only reflects and celebrates our global communities but also supports them by running on machine specs that sometimes feel downright uncomfortable." Donlan attributes Unreal Engine with providing a foundation that was adaptable and flexible, providing developers the freedom to focus on innovation as opposed to focusing on the game's engine. She goes so far as to say that without Unreal Engine, Valorant couldn't exist.
Donlan also shares that Valorant is currently running on Unreal Engine version 4.27. "We have squeezed literally every ounce of everything we could get out of UE4, so now we make the move to UE5," said Donlan. Despite the leap in engine technology, the new upgrade is not expected to mark any dramatic shift in Valorant's visual fidelity or overall performance, so much as it is expected to provide a foundation for future projects.
"Maybe those devs are working on something I can't talk about," said Donlan, "Maybe those devs are thinking about ways to expand the Val universe into new playable experiences. Maybe we feel very fortunate to have everything UE5 can offer at our disposal."
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Valorant was, first and foremost, designed as a PC game but launched on Xbox and PlayStation earlier this year. "FPS on console? Sure. But a tactical shooter on a console? Especially one that's trying to deliver the gameplay experience that we are? We really couldn't wrap our heads around it," said Donlan. Donlan adds that if Valorant had been developed on a PC-first proprietary game engine, the console ports may not have happened, as Riot had never launched a live-service title on console.
According to Donlon, Unreal Engine's support for multiple platforms provided features like rendering implementations and platform native input handling on a readily optimized engine. These features gave the development team the ability to focus on core gameplay mechanics, anti-cheat, and other elements of Valorant rather than focusing on the porting process.
"Millions of players are playing Val on console now, and we owe a huge part of that to our relationship with Unreal," Donlan revealed. Valorant currently has 35 million players across all platforms.
