Epic has released a new version of the Epic Games Launcher, with a preview version of the company’s refreshed Steam competitor available to download now.
This new Epic Games Launcher, which was built using AI and “vibe coding”, is currently in the early stages of development and so is “light on features” according to a new blog post from Epic. The preview version features the core components you’d expect from a launcher, including store, library, and social panels, as well as the Unreal-focused developer page.
“It's been rebuilt entirely from the ground up,” explained Martin Keely, vice president and general manager of Epic Games Store, in an interview with IGN. “So this is a completely new tech stack, a complete new rewrite of both the shell, which has the download manager, library, and the app itself, as well as the new store architecture. So features like discover and product detail pages, those have all been rewritten.”
In terms of improvements, for this first phase of the rebuild the big focus has been on speed. Epic says that the launcher boots from cold in 5.47 seconds, which it claims is 46% faster than Steam. When re-opening the app from the system tray, it takes just .36 seconds – 14% faster than Steam. These times will surely vary depending on your system specs, but in ideal conditions it does appear the new app is much speedier than its sluggish predecessor.
“The library loads 30 times faster [than in the previous launcher],” said Keely.
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