The Epic Games Store has a brand-new vibe-coded launcher coded by AI because “programming is hard”, womp womp. Pitched as a Faster Than Steam marketplace, this new version of EGS has been pitched entirely on the basis that it’s faster than Steam, but those figures are based on outdated figures.
In the announcement for the new version of the Epic Games Store, Epic announced that the new “way faster and more responsive” marketplace is “light on features” compared to its predecessor. Considering it took the original storefront three years to add a basic shopping cart feature, that’s entirely unsurprising.
As Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney is always popping off about Valve’s Steam storefront, which largely holds a user-opted monopoly because it’s simply the best service around, the marketing spiel behind the new Epic Games Store boasts about its boot-up speeds compared to Steam. (Although, I’d argue that more features, fewer bugs, better stability, and more games are better reasons to use a storefront, but that’s just me.)
In a graph, the Epic claims that the new EGS application is 46% faster than Steam from cold start with Epic launching in 5.47 seconds compared to Steam at 10.07 seconds. Additionally, the client restores from system tray in .36 seconds versus Steam’s .47 seconds, a negligible difference that few care about in that second comparison anyway.
However, these numbers are based on a version of Steam from prior to Valve’s October 13, 2026 client update which “improved Steam Client startup performance” as well as fixed issues in restoring from system tray.
This update, which you can read here, also saw massive additional features to Big Picture Mode, the brilliant Steam Input API, and Remote Play—all features that are missing from Epic’s “light on features” relaunch.
In our testing over multiple runs, this new Steam client now boots from cold start in just 6.52 seconds on average (across multiple Windows, Linux, and MacOS devices). While slower than Epic’s reported figures, which we haven’t verified, Epic’s figures are not 46% faster than Steam in its current version. We also didn’t test the .11 second difference between system tray boots because, honestly, who cares about a .11 second difference?
If Epic’s figures are correct, the new Epic Games Store boots faster, but it is also booting significantly less, and now gamers have to trust their financial information on an entire vibecoded storefront. On Steam, you’re loading a robust storefront of games, mod workshops, community forums, tradable items, friends lists, broadcasts, discovery queues, customisable emojis and profiles, and more. On Epic, you’re launching a store with less games, and it’s ever-so-sightly faster. Who cares?
Competition is good. In fact, more options are great, and I use the Epic Games Store because I couldn’t care less where I get the best deal from, although the vibe-coded nature of its replacement is far more worrying. I want the Epic Games Store to be good, but scrapping everything to load slightly better than Steam on startup—because any win against Valve is worth destroying everything—what’s even the point?
