'The Epic Games Store launcher sucks less than it used to' is not very high praise but it's about as far as I'm willing to go. It has improved, undeniably, but it's still painfully slow, awkward, and just not pleasant to use—not to the point that I refuse to use it, but if I have a choice between Steam and Epic, all else being equal I'm going with Steam. My PR pals at Epic may not be super-happy to hear me say that out loud, but I'm not the only one who feels that way: Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney thinks so too.
"One of the reasons that people characterize the Epic Games launcher as clunky is because the Epic Games launcher is clunky," Sweeney said during a recent interview with Lex Fridman. "We need to improve this."
"We've not put enough emphasis on the quality of life features. We've recognized this very clearly multiple times and we've gone through multiple refactorings. But you know, that's definitely been a disappointment to us and to a lot of users."
It has indeed been disappointing: In our 2024 comparison of the many launchers available for PC, Epic scored a miserable 41%—better than the Microsoft Store, EA, and Battlenet, to be fair, but still a far cry from Steam, GOG Galaxy, and even Itch.io.
One of the challenges facing Epic, according to Sweeney, is that its launcher's problems aren't "uniform," but can vary dramatically depending on the user's distance to a CDN (content delivery network) and the size of their collection. Speaking from experience, that rings true: I have no idea where my neighborhood CDN is but I do have pretty crappy internet, and loading up any kind of sizable Epic library is an exercise in frustration—especially when compared to Steam, which flows like water by comparison.
Comparisons with Steam also came up in the interview, naturally: Sweeney reiterated his long-held position that the Epic launcher shouldn't adopt all the features offered by Steam, but said he does want "all of the convenience features that makes it as easy and fun to use as Steam."
He also predicted—boldly, I would say—that in the long run, "the benefits of the Epic Games approach are going to outweigh the benefits of this Steam approach, especially as gaming becomes multi-platform."
"Your game vastly benefits by connecting all of its players together and not segregating them off into different online platform populations and so on," Sweeney said. "I think the future trend is in that direction. I wish Valve had opened up Steamworks to just work on all platforms. They could have easily done it, we did it, but they seem to be using it as a lever to keep people locked into the Steam PC game store."
Sweeney also took a moment to call out "a very toxic group of Steam users" who engage in "harassment campaigns" against developers who use Epic Online Services. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, for instance, suffered a spate of early negative reviews on Steam because it automatically installed Epic Online Services along with the rest of the game in order to enable crossplay and synchronized friends lists.
"Developers do that so they can connect their players across platforms and have friends across platforms and voices across platforms," Sweeney said. "But, you know, suddenly that's trying to be turned into a negative."
Whether Sweeney's prediction that Epic will ultimately outlast Steam (or, I suppose, that he'll one day convince Gabe and company to open their walled garden) remains to be seen. For now, though, I think we can all agree that he's right that we're right about the Epic launcher: It is definitely clunky. Fortunately, if you're one of the Epic users struggling with it, there are options: GOG Galaxy will do the job, and for something more purpose-built, Heroic "is miles better at being the Epic Games Launcher than the Epic Games Launcher," according to PC Gamer dot com.
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