Riot teases ‘new playable experiences’ in the Valorant universe

Riot Games has teased plans for “new playable experiences” in the Valorant universe.

Speaking at Unreal Fest this week, Valorant studio head Anna Donlon said the game is currently on version 4.27 of Epic’s Unreal Engine, but that it will be transitioning to UE5.

“We have squeezed literally every ounce of everything we could out of Unreal 4, so now we make the move to UE5. That is not an easy feat when your game is a live service game but it’s necessary for sure.

“And this upgrade is not going to significantly change how Valorant looks or performs, at least not right away, but here’s what I can say,” she continued. “There are many developers back at Riot who are incredibly grateful for what Unreal has allowed us to do for players, and there are many developers back at Riot who are very excited about what UE5 can do for us in the future.

“Maybe those devs are working on something I can’t talk about. Maybe those devs are thinking about ways to expand the Valorant universe into new playable experiences.

“Maybe we feel very fortunate to have everything UE5 can offer at our disposal, and maybe we feel super stoked that because we chose Unreal for Valorant we can move our devs around and our tech around and our everything around really, really easily to explore those totally hypothetical new playable experiences.

“So maybe you’ll me or someone else from my team up here in the future with a very different sort of presentation.”

Originally released for PC in June 2020, the free-to-play, 5v5 character-based shooter was released for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in August.

Valorant has 35 million players per month, according to Donlon.