[ohgodplsno]

UE4 works hard to make you not edit its source code, yes. But the biggest reason for this is allowing you to update through versions, with no struggle.

Games like Valorant are using their own modified version, and from their own admission, every version bump must be carefully considered and takes upwards of a month to reintegrate their changes in a painstakingly slow process.

[skohan]

To me this would be an argument against a tightly coupled monolithic engine like UE4. For instance, imagine if Valorant is only interested in a new version of the engine for new post-processing effects introduced into the renderer. Why should they have to migrate gameplay code to get benefits which have nothing to do with gameplay?

[ohgodplsno]

They actually _are_ changing things like the renderer, hence their need to take a long time for migrations. Basic gameplay code is written with blueprints, base classes are in C++ but do not replace the core code.

[skohan]

My point is not about what Valorant is doing specifically, it's about the drawbacks of a tightly coupled, opinionated system