If you’re apprehensive about the impact of VALORANT’s upgrade to Unreal Engine 5 on your frame rates, there’s no need to fret. Interestingly, Riot Games isn’t utilizing one of the leading game engines to enhance graphics; instead, their focus is solely on boosting performance.
Riot Nu, the technological lead for VALORANT, has indicated that the upcoming version 11.02 patch, set to introduce the UE5 upgrade on July 29, will not bring any visual alterations. However, players with lower-end systems can look forward to some positive news.
«In the course of the upgrade, the development team undertook significant performance optimizations across the entire game,» Nu stated in response to a tweet on X (formerly known as Twitter). It’s important to note that while improvements are underway, they are expected to be minor, particularly for those on high-end machines.
«You likely won’t notice significant changes, but most systems–including those with lower specifications–should experience a slight FPS boost with the UE5 update. The gameplay will remain consistent,» Nu clarified.
Apart from the performance improvements, the shift to UE5 will also help to decrease the amount of storage space VALORANT requires. However, this will only be noticeable after the update is installed. To ensure a smooth installation and to return to gameplay without issues, players will need to have at least 30 GB of free disk space for the required «content updates» and «decompression cache» during the update process.
While VALORANT has never been criticized for a lack of optimization–the game is often regarded as one of the most efficient in terms of performance–Riot asserts that the switch to UE5 will further improve this aspect.
Unreal Engine 5 may be a powerful tool for 2025, but its known tendency to cause performance issues makes its role in optimizing VALORANT seem somewhat ironic. Additionally, creating a game with UE5 without leveraging its graphical capabilities can feel like a missed chance. Yet, Riot maintains that this approach is not detrimental to the game, so perhaps we are mistaken in our perceptions.
