Epic gjenoppbygger launcheren sin med Steams Playbook i sikte

Epic Games is rebuilding the Epic Games Launcher from the ground up, with claims of a 5x faster cold start on average and a 6.5x faster systray restore to the library. The figures come from Unreal Fest slides posted by Pirat_Nation on X, which lay out a redesign aimed at the two complaints that have dogged the app for years: slow boot times and sluggish navigation. A faster cold start and quicker restore from the system tray are the headline numbers.

The Launcher has a reputation problem that goes beyond speed. Games launch on click rather than opening a detail page, and downloads spawn a separate window instead of staying inside the app. Larger libraries make the lag worse, a problem PC Gamer flagged back in 2023 when comparing the app to the third-party Heroic Launcher. The rebuild is pitched as the fix.

Most of the planned changes read as Steam features arriving on Epic years late. The slides list personalized game recommendations on the home page, quick-access categories for single-page browsing, and product detail pages tied to each player's community, progression, and the game's story. Patch notes will sit on a game's storefront page. Pirat_Nation also points to written player reviews, player profiles with avatars, Xbox and PlayStation controller support, cross-region game gifting, publisher-funded coupons, and a tool to check how a given game will run on a player's hardware.

I run a small enough Epic library that the lag has never been the dealbreaker it is for people with hundreds of titles, but the absence of basics like reviews and patch notes on a store page has always been the harder thing to defend. I think copying Steam here is the correct move, because most PC players already know that layout and the design works for a reason: click a game and you reach everything tied to it.

What the slides do not give is a release date. Epic has not said when the rebuild ships, and the performance claims remain Epic's own averages rather than independently tested numbers. The promise of a less laggy app rests on those figures holding up once the redesign reaches users.

The Launcher work lands during a rough stretch for Epic. The news that Epic cuts over 1,000 jobs broke in March, with the company attributing the move to rising Fortnite development costs and a measurable decline in player engagement. The reductions wiped out close to a quarter of the company's headcount in a single morning and shut down several Fortnite projects, including Rocket Racing, Ballistic, and Festival Battle Stage. Roughly 4,000 employees remained afterward.

Analysts framed the cuts as the result of years of heavy spending rather than Fortnite alone. Piers Harding-Rolls of Ampere Analysis noted Epic had leaned on battle royale revenue since 2017 to fund its storefront and development tools, and that a 2025 engagement drop forced immediate action. Average monthly playtime fell from over 29 hours in December 2023 to 15.4 hours by 2025, while Roblox passed Fortnite in playtime and daily visits starting in April 2025. The legal fights with Apple and Google added pressure; Tim Sweeney has said those campaigns cost Epic at least a billion dollars in potential revenue.

The cuts drew public criticism from a former Valve writer, Chet Faliszek, who questioned why a privately held company without shareholder pressure would run layoffs on that scale.

"It's not like they're a publicly traded company. It's not like there's some need to hit the stock market thing. This is Tim Sweeney. This is Tim."

— Chet Faliszek

Faliszek contrasted Epic's direction with Valve's culture of developer agency, arguing that staff stayed at Valve because they felt ownership over what they built. He also pointed at EA, citing the studio behind Battlefield 6 as another case of layoffs following a hit.

Epic is not retreating on new development. Bloomberg reported the company is building a Disney extraction shooter for a November release, the first title from Disney's $1.5 billion investment in Epic. Sources compared it stylistically to Embark Studios' Arc Raiders and called the project "not very original," while saying staff remain optimistic about the launch. The game would drop into a crowded November alongside Bungie's Marathon, Krafton's PUBG: Black Budget, and Deep Worlds' Beautiful Light, all competing for the same audience.