Epic Says Its Vibe-Coded Launcher Beats Steam on Speed, With Bugs Included

Epic Games is putting a new version of its PC storefront in front of players, and it is making two claims at once: the app is quicker than Valve's Steam, and it is not finished. The new build is labeled "Preview," and Epic says it "will have some bugs." That is an unusually candid warning for a launcher that millions of people already use to buy and run games.

The speed claim is the eye-catching part. Steam is the default storefront for most PC gamers, and launcher startup and browsing speed are common complaints across the industry, so a faster alternative would matter to anyone who opens a client before every session. The source describes the new launcher as "vibe-coded," a term for software written largely through AI-assisted prompting rather than traditional hand-written development. That detail is likely to draw attention, since it raises questions about how much of the codebase was reviewed line by line and how stable it will be at launch.

What the source does not give is the evidence behind the speed comparison. It does not say which tasks were timed, on what hardware, or whether the test covered cold starts, library loading, or store pages. Until Epic publishes those details, the claim should be read as a company's own assessment. Players who want to try the Preview build should expect rough edges, and anyone who relies on the launcher daily may want to wait for a more polished release.