Epic Games Store will begin testing forums for its "top games," walking back its earlier decision to skip community forums on the storefront, according to a PC Gamer report. The reversal arrives alongside word of a significant technical overhaul of the store itself, with Epic's team describing the effort bluntly: "We're ripping out the guts."

For developers, the change matters because forums have long been a gap in Epic's platform feature set. Valve's Steam ships with per-game community hubs, discussion boards and user-generated infrastructure by default, and publishers have repeatedly cited that tooling as part of Steam's retention advantage. Epic's store has operated without native forums since its December 2018 launch, pushing player conversation toward Discord, Reddit and other external channels.

What changes for studios?

The pilot will cover only a selection of "top games" at first, per the report, meaning most catalog titles will not get forums immediately. That scoping suggests Epic is treating this as an incremental test rather than a platform-wide rollout, and no timeline for expansion to the broader catalog has been announced.

The phased approach also leaves open questions for studios shipping mid-tier and smaller titles, which have the most to gain from in-store community features that don't require them to build and moderate their own infrastructure.

Why is Epic "ripping out the guts"?

The quoted technical overhaul indicates Epic is reworking the store's underlying architecture rather than patching its frontend. Epic has previously positioned the Epic Games Store as its answer to Steam's 30% default revenue share, offering developers an 88/12 split and running free game giveaways to drive user acquisition.

Store boss Steve Allison and his team have acknowledged platform shortcomings in past public appearances, and forum support has featured on user-requested feature lists for years. This latest statement goes further than earlier commitments, framing the work as foundational rather than cosmetic.

A rebuilt backend could matter for developers if it speeds up feature delivery across the store — from achievements and mod support to review and community tooling — areas where Epic has historically trailed Valve.

What happens next?

Watch for the initial forum test cohort: which games qualify as "top games," how moderation is handled, and how quickly Epic moves from pilot to catalog-wide availability. The pace of that rollout will signal whether the storefront overhaul is a structural investment or another incremental experiment.