Epic Games Store plans faster launcher and user reviews overhaul

Epic Games said its next launcher rebuild will arrive first in a private beta, with cold-start boot times promised to be five times faster and a system-tray restore back to the library running 6.5 times faster on average. The overhaul, previewed at Unreal Fest in Chicago, also adds user reviews, player profiles with avatars, patch notes on store pages and universal controller support.

The pitch goes straight to the complaints that have dogged the Epic Games Store since its launch in 2018: the launcher has often felt slower and less complete than Steam. Faster boot times matter because they change the daily rhythm of use, whether a player is opening the store to check sales, browse a library or launch a game. User reviews matter for the same reason. They help shoppers judge titles before buying and give the storefront a community layer that has long been a core part of Steam’s appeal.

Epic Games Store vice president and general manager Steve Allison said in February that the company was "ripping the guts out" of the launcher and replacing the backend, and said the work began in October. That makes the newly unveiled roadmap look less like a cosmetic update than a deeper rebuild of the store’s foundation. As Allison put it in the broader project, "It’s time for a change."

The timing also reflects how much larger the platform has become. Epic said in its 2025 Year in Review that PC players spent $1.16 billion on the Epic Games Store, third-party game spending reached $400 million, third-party gameplay hours hit 2.78 billion and monthly active users on PC reached 78 million. In its 2024 review, Epic said 1,100 games launched on the store, taking the catalog past 4,000 products, with peak daily active users at 37.2 million and peak monthly active users at 74 million.

Epic now says the catalog exceeds 6,000 games, a scale that raises the cost of every slowdown and missing feature. For a store that has leaned heavily on free games and promotions to win attention, the addition of reviews and a faster backend signals a more direct challenge to Steam’s long-standing advantage: convenience, familiarity and a fuller social layer. If Epic delivers the rebuild cleanly, it could reduce friction for millions of PC gamers and make the store feel less like a gateway and more like a destination.