It’s hardly a secret that the Epic Games Store… well, sucks. There’s no polite way to put it. Even vice president and general manager Steven Allison said as much. Thankfully, the storefront is making some much-needed improvements.
As reported by Epic partner and Fortnite leaker Shiina, the “Epic Launcher V2” is hosting a public beta in August, and one of the most noteworthy improvements is that the storefront will no longer be built on Unreal Engine, meaning that we can expect “greatly increased performance and navigation speed.” Commenter zoe.exe put it best, “Finally a launcher that won’t make me feel like I’m loading a three-hour movie just to open a game.”
“To set expectations, the team has been working hard to deliver an experience that is materially better than what you have today,” Epic explained. “We will need a few extra weeks to deliver the beta, and we are now targeting mid-August (around Gamescom). That said, I have to give some sweet with the sour. With the full public release, you can expect to see some new features, including an aggregated library, a whole new library view, and new library interactions. I can’t wait for you all to see what we are cooking, but we all need to hold tight just a little longer.”
The 2026 roadmap, which was unveiled last month, details library management improvements, cross-region gifting, storefront rearchitecture, patch notes, UX and design improvements, player profiles and avatars, user reviews, discovery improvements, coupons, universal controller support, social discovery, notifications overhaul, and much more slated for future updates.
Public Beta Aiming To Launch Mid-August
I know PC players (myself included) love to dunk on EGS, especially given how annoying Tim Sweeney can be, advocating for Grok even while it generates explicit images of people without their consent, and telling Steam how it can make improvements while his own storefront took years to add a shopping cart. But more options is ultimately a good thing.
Just look at Sony ceasing game disc production in 2028, threatening a digital exclusive PS6 with a closed ecosystem. It might deny the implication of a monopoly, but having complete control over pricing without any competition is a worrying precedent. Especially when digital purchases are really just revocable non-exclusive licenses. EGS is hardly a gleaming example of good competition on PC, but maybe one day it can be.
Otherwise, these improvements promise to make it far less of a headache to launch Fortnite, since you won’t have to wrangle with an archaic and oddly intensive launcher to get into the Battle Bus.
