Steven Allison acknowledges some people will always say « F— Epic », as Epic Games Store’s focus finally shifts to player experience.
Epic has released its usual stream of annual stats for the Epic Games Store, including a big increase in third-party spending and a confirmation of a notable drop in Fortnite playtime. But alongside that the publisher-developer, engine-maker and storefront owner is also promising some major improvements to the oft-maligned store itself.
The headline improvements come in the form of much better speed, more features – noticeably social ones from player to player – and a cross-platform library between your PC and your mobile phone.
« We have a lot of things we need to fix », admitted Epic Games Store vice president and general manager Steven Allison said, during an interview with Eurogamer. « We have needed to fix them for years. We’ve been really focused on developer tooling and all the things we do there. But last year, we finally started to point more of our resources towards player experience stuff, all the things that our players have needed, wanted, and all critics rightfully take us to task on.
« We got a lot of stuff out the door last year, and this year is going to be probably the best year for that stuff on the ‘big rocks’. And the big rocks are: the launcher sucks. Let’s call it what it is. It’s really slow », he continued.
« It makes calls to our back-end services to refresh every time you click around, and depending on your connection, you’ll have to wait a couple seconds. And that just doesn’t feel good, especially when people are comparing and contrasting and dual using one that doesn’t do that. »
Work on the architecture started in November 2025, he says, and is making « great progress. We’re basically pulling the guts out, putting new guts in. » Those speed improvements should appear for players around May or June, according to Allison, and Epic’s official press release states « this summer ».
