A stopwatch comparison
Epic picked a fight on a stopwatch, and Valve moved the finish line the day before. The new Epic Games Launcher Preview, out October 14, is pitched as 46% faster than Steam from cold start to store page. The Steam it was timed against no longer exists: Valve’s October 13 client update lists “Improved Steam Client startup performance” as its first general change.
The numbers, and what they were measured against
Epic’s chart puts its launcher at 5.47 seconds and Steam at 10.07 seconds, according to FRVR’s reading of it. The testing was commissioned from Keywords Studios, five runs across 13 Windows machines, per Tom’s Hardware. Epic’s second claim, restoring from the system tray in 0.36 seconds against Steam’s 0.47, is a gap nobody will feel.
| Measurement | Epic Preview | Steam |
|---|---|---|
| Epic’s chart (pre-update Steam) | 5.47s | 10.07s |
| FRVR, updated Steam, average | not tested | 6.52s |
| PC Gamer, tray to store page, one RTX 4070 Super PC | 5.98s | 9.32s |
None of those rows are like-for-like. FRVR averaged the updated Steam across several Windows, Linux and macOS machines but didn’t re-test Epic. PC Gamer timed both clients from the system tray, three runs each on one iBuyPower prebuilt, and still found Epic a few seconds ahead. The honest summary is that Epic is probably quicker to its front page, by less than its headline says.
A faster launcher that does less
Epic’s own announcement calls the Preview “light on features” and “a speedboat and not a yacht”, and its FAQ says certain social features and account management options haven’t made the jump yet. Steam’s October 13 update, the one that sped up its startup, also added a Big Art home screen mode, a personal calendar, screensavers and a page of Big Picture and Steam Input fixes. Starting quicker is easier when there’s less to start.
Programming is hard. So, instead of doing that, we vibe coded a new Epic Games Launcher that’s way faster and more responsive than the current one, and has a new look.
Epic Games Store announcement, October 14
Epic Games Store general manager Martin Keely told IGN the launcher was “rebuilt entirely from the ground up”, a new tech stack covering the download manager, library and store pages, as quoted by Rock Paper Shotgun. The Preview ships native builds for Windows 10 and 11, macOS 12 or newer, and, for the first time, Linux (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Fedora 43 or Debian 12).
The warning Epic walked back
At launch, Epic recommended that competitive players and developers on live projects stick with the current launcher. After the coverage, communications manager Brian Sharon told Tom’s Hardware that “there’s nothing that would prevent casual or competitive play”, and Epic removed the recommendation from its post. The old launcher stays available, and Epic hasn’t set a date for moving everyone across. Until it does, the stopwatch matters less than whether the Preview ever catches up with the client it replaced.
