Epic says the 'ground-up rebuild' of its launcher offers 5-6.5x improved performance, and the Epic Games Store is getting a big redesign

If we did one of our weekly polls on which game platform/store is your favourite, I would be very surprised if anything other than a miniscule minority of readers selected the Epic Games Store. I barely ever use the thing and even I know it’s not the most enjoyable experience. But that might not be the case for much longer, as there’s a big update coming.

We first reported on plans for a technical overhaul of the Epic Games Store in February. Epic Games Store GM Steve Allison told us at the time that the improvement is “pretty profound.”

New slides out of Unreal Fest, posted on X by Pirat_Nation, describe a complete redesign of the launcher, and the big claims are that the “ground-up rebuild” will lead to a “5x faster cold start (average)” and “6.5x faster systray restore to library (average).” In other words, much quicker to boot up, either from the system tray or cold.

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I thankfully have a small enough library on the platform that it isn’t too sluggish, but I’ve heard some real terror tales from colleagues with bigger libraries. Our Jacob (different Jacob) wrote about the phenomena back in 2023 when comparing to the Heroic Launcher.

I have no reason to doubt him, either, given the general difficulty I have using the app. For example, launching games on-press rather than displaying more info, and popping up a separate window for downloads.

Other changes shown on the slides include:

Personalised game recommendations on the home page
Quick-access categories for easier single-page browsing
Product detail pages tailored to each player, “connecting players to the game’s community, story, and their own progression”
Patch notes on the game’s storefront

We reported in February that there are plans to test “community and forums around some of the top games on the store” and add player profiles, avatars, private messaging, voice chat, and game-independent parties.

According to Pirat_Nation, the Epic Games Store will also get cross-region game gifting, publisher-funded coupons, and a tool to check how games will run on your system.

A screenshot of my very own Epic Games Launcher library.

(Image credit: Future)

A lot of this of course sounds very similar to how Valve does things on Steam, and that’s not a bad thing in my books. For one, most PC gamers use Steam and it’s what they’re used to. And second, well, it’s just a better design. If you click a game page, for instance, you want to be able to access anything relevant to that game, whether it’s patch notes, reviews, or whatever else.

Let’s just hope the new rebuild lands before too long and follows through on what its promises. I’ll be particularly keen to see how actual in-app navigation feels in terms of snappiness. Launchers are tools after all, not products in themselves—they should keep out of the way as much as possible.