Earlier this year, Riot Games unveiled its future roadmap for Valorant, with one of the most immediate plans being an upgrade to Unreal Engine 5.
At the time of writing, the tactical shooter is running on Unreal Engine 4. As per the devs, the engine upgrade to Unreal Engine 5 will bring better visuals, performance enhancements, and enable faster patch downloads moving forward without changing the core gameplay mechanics.
While the Valorant engine upgrade is still about a month away, recent leaks suggest that Riot is planning to give players free Gun Buddies to celebrate the transition.
Riot Might Give Out Free Gun Buddies To Celebrate Unreal Engine 5 Upgrade
As per a leak from prominent Valorant dataminer ‘VALORANTLeaksEN’ on X (formerly Twitter), players who tune into the game during Patch 11.02 will get the ”Hot New Engine” Gun Buddy for free.
This Gun Buddy will be given out to players as part of the celebration for Valorant’s Unreal Engine 5 upgrade
Whether Riot has more rewards planned for the occasion remains to be seen.
How To Get the “How New Engine Gun” Buddy in Valorant
If the aforementioned leaks are anything to go by, players will be able to claim the “Hot New Engine” Gun Buddy by simply logging into Valorant during patch 11.02.
The Valorant 11.02 update will hit the live servers towards the end of July 2025.