Epic Games said it will carry out a broad rewrite of the Epic Games Store’s underlying code, as the videogame publisher seeks to address long-standing complaints about performance and expand the platform with new social and cross-platform features.
The company said the overhaul is intended to make the store more responsive and stable, with faster load times and reduced system resource usage, an area where the Epic Games Store has lagged behind Valve’s Steam. Epic said the rebuilt application is expected to begin rolling out from the summer.
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The move follows a year of record activity for the Epic Games Store in 2025, when it reached 78 million monthly active users. Epic said players spent more than $400 million on third-party games, excluding Fortnite, and logged a total of 2.78 billion hours playing titles distributed through the platform.
Despite that growth, Epic acknowledged that its launcher has fallen short in software quality and convenience features. The company said it plans to introduce expanded user profiles, avatars, and standalone voice chat that works across games, alongside new friend group functions scheduled for 2026.
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Epic also said it is preparing tighter integration between PC and mobile, allowing certain games available on both platforms to be purchased once and accessed across devices, as part of what it described as an effort to “rewrite most of the Epic Games Store’s code” and modernize the service to better compete with Steam.
Source: Epic Games, Polygon