Nearly eight years after Epic launched Steam with its own games store and launcher, the Fortnite maker is deploying a new tool to give it an advantage over Valve: vibe coding.
In announcing the new publicly available “Preview” version of its Epic Games launcher, Epic wrote that “coding is hard. So instead of doing that, we coded a new Epic Games launcher that is much faster and more responsive than the current one, and has a new look.” And while it may seem a bit ironic, Epic Games Store GM and VP Martin Keely told PC Gamer that the team “started from scratch” and used AI as “a tool to write and review new features and capabilities from scratch in a different technology stack than we had before.” The goal, Keely said, was “to look at features that existed (in the current Epic Games launcher) and (let’s say) we want to replicate them, but not the code itself.”
Speaking to IGN, Keely clarified that using AI to code the new Launcher “made us more efficient and allowed a small team to rewrite the code base and be able to launch it faster on all platforms, support Windows and Mac, and we will also have a Linux version.”
We coded the Epic Games launcher to be faster than the other guy.
You don’t believe us? Test it for yourself in the preview:
https://t.co/pdtAeEIri4 https://t.co/aMxojUUVPV– Epic Games Store (@EpicGames) October 14, 2026
The emphasis on startup speed extends to Epic’s social media announcement, which once again emphasizes that “we coded the Epic Games launcher to be faster than the other guy.” Ars’ own testing confirms that the new launcher goes from a cold boot to the store page a few seconds faster than Steam (assuming no connection or update issues get in the way). Epic also claims that the new launcher can restore from the system tray to the Library screen slightly faster than Steam, although the claimed difference of 0.06 seconds seems so small as to be imperceptible (and was during our testing).
Gn tech
