Epic Games will ship a fully rebuilt Epic Games Store launcher in May or June, replacing a backend that the store's general manager admits loses to Steam on speed and resource usage. Steven Allison, VP and general manager of the Epic Games Store, confirmed the timeline in interviews with Polygon and Eurogamer following the platform's 2025 year-in-review report.

"We're ripping the guts out of the Epic Games launcher, entirely – well, mostly entirely – and replacing it," Allison told Polygon. He conceded that the client currently contacts Epic's servers whenever users click or move the mouse cursor, causing lag that can be measured in seconds, and that it consumes significantly more system resources than Steam.

Why did the launcher fall behind?

Allison framed the technical debt as a matter of engineering priorities. Epic spent roughly three years building self-publishing tools and automating what had been "super manual onboarding" for major titles, diverting engineering focus from the player-facing client.

"It isn't that we ignored it," Allison said, "but we had to get out of the super manual onboarding of important titles. We had to build the tools for self-publishing, and that took us, like, almost three years. It was a major focus of our engineering."

Work on the overhaul began around November. By summer, Epic expects a client that loads substantially faster. "It should start to feel good, be faster and people be like, 'Holy shit. It doesn't suck so much.' And that will be a win for us," Allison said.

What social features are coming?

During the first half of this year, Epic plans to close part of the gap with Steam's social stack. The roadmap includes:

• Private messaging
• Voice chat
• Game-independent parties
• Player profiles and avatars
• A beta feature resembling asynchronous forum posting

These additions target a long-standing competitive deficit: Steam offers mature chat, forums and community hubs that the Epic Games Store has never matched at scale.

How does Fortnite tie into pre-orders?

Publishers including Capcom, miHoYo, Pearl Abyss, S-Game, MintRocket and Kakao Games will bundle Fortnite cosmetics with pre-orders of their games. Allison pointed to Resident Evil Requiem, which launches February 27, as an early example of the mechanic.

For publishers, the arrangement converts Fortnite's massive audience into a pre-order incentive at no cost to Epic's own IP strategy. Epic also plans regional storefronts with localized discovery, letting publishers target specific territories, and cross-platform PC and mobile libraries scheduled for this fall.

Does the spending data justify the investment?

The 2025 numbers suggest momentum after years of stagnation. Third-party game spending reached an unprecedented $400 million, reversing a trend visible since 2019: millions of users created accounts to claim free games, but the number paying for third-party titles had barely moved through 2024.

Epic grew the client's total user base to 317 million in 2025, though total gameplay hours dropped last year, likely signaling a decline in Fortnite playtime.

Can Epic gain share against Steam?

Allison claimed Epic never planned to dethrone Steam, which commands roughly 90 percent of the PC gaming market, but he set a concrete target: between 30 and 40 percent market share within five years. "I don't think the battle has been lost at all," he said.

The rebuild's May or June launch is the first testable milestone on that path. If the rebuilt client ships on schedule and the social features land in the first half of the year, the fall rollout of cross-platform PC and mobile libraries becomes the next signal to watch.