Epic has launched a brand new model of the Epic Video games Launcher, with a preview model of the corporate’s refreshed Steam competitor accessible to obtain now.
This new Epic Video games Launcher, which was constructed utilizing AI and “vibe coding”, is at present within the early phases of growth and so is “gentle on options” in response to a new blog post from Epic. The preview model options the core elements you’d anticipate from a launcher, together with retailer, library, and social panels, in addition to the Unreal-focused developer web page.
“It has been rebuilt completely from the bottom up,” defined Martin Keely, vice chairman and basic supervisor of Epic Video games Retailer, in an interview with IGN. “So it is a utterly new tech stack, a whole new rewrite of each the shell, which has the obtain supervisor, library, and the app itself, in addition to the brand new retailer structure. So options like uncover and product element pages, these have all been rewritten.”
When it comes to enhancements, for this primary section of the rebuild the massive focus has been on pace. Epic says that the launcher boots from chilly in 5.47 seconds, which it claims is 46% sooner than Steam. When re-opening the app from the system tray, it takes simply .36 seconds – 14% sooner than Steam. These occasions will certainly differ relying in your system specs, however in superb circumstances it does seem the brand new app is far speedier than its sluggish predecessor.
“The library hundreds 30 occasions sooner [than in the previous launcher],” stated Keely. “The startup is twice as quick. And it is a small footprint, solely 300mb. That was one other factor that we needed to proceed to make as small as doable to assist the wide selection of {hardware} that gamers have.”
For this new model of the launcher, Epic is supporting Home windows, MacOS, and, for the primary time, Linux. That additionally implies that Fortnite is coming to Linux, though it’s not accessible fairly but – Epic first must rebuild its Easy Anti-Cheat system for the platform. “As soon as it’s working with a essential mass of distro maintainers, we’ll convey Fortnite to Linux through the Epic Video games Launcher,” defined Epic’s weblog publish.
Past the pace and platform upgrades, the brand new launcher options some much-needed high quality of life enhancements, reminiscent of higher customisation – the brand new high bar may be adjusted to show the tabs so as of choice, and the library may be filtered utilizing a wide range of classes.
When it comes to what future updates will supply, Keely revealed that “the opposite piece that we’ll be engaged on is enhance sport discovery in a approach that’s related to every participant. We have now a fairly large library and generally there’s nice video games that might be related for somebody, so ensuring that we proceed to enhance the merchandising elements of how we make sport discovery extra doable and make that extra social so that individuals can suggest video games to one another and make that simple to share.”
Epic had beforehand detailed its plans for a brand new launcher earlier this yr, the place it stated that its efforts would result in five times faster boot times. In fact, whereas pace is a matter, it might effectively take greater than that to persuade gamers – some stay satisfied that the Epic Games Store will never be as good as Steam.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Govt Editor of Options.