The rivalry between Valve and Epic Games added a new chapter, and this time with an ending that seems ripped from a meme. On October 14, Epic released the preview version of its new Epic Games launcher, programmed with the help of artificial intelligence, and it presented it by directly comparing it to Steam, claiming it opens almost twice as fast. However, just one day later Valve published a Steam update that, according to early user tests, reduced its startup time in half and left it even ahead of the launcher that had challenged it.
According to Wccftech, Epic introduced the novelty in English with a phrase that did not go unnoticed, “we built with vibe coding a new Epic Games launcher that is much faster and more responsive than the current one”. Vibe coding is the practice of programming by asking an artificial intelligence to write the code, a trend that has already yielded results such as AI-generated free alternatives to Photoshop and Premiere created by a single programmer.
What the new Epic Games launcher promised
According to tests commissioned by Epic to Keywords Studios on 13 computers, the new launcher opens in 5.47 seconds from a cold start, compared to 10.07 seconds for Steam, i.e., about 1.8 times faster. Furthermore, the company claims that its store loads three times faster than Steam’s and that the game library does so up to 30 times faster.
The preview version also arrives for the first time on Linux, with official support for Ubuntu 22.04, Fedora 43 and Debian 12 or newer, in addition to Windows and macOS with Apple Silicon processors. That said, it still lacks some social and account features, and Epic advises competitive Fortnite and Rocket League players to continue using the current launcher for now.
The Steam update that changed the comparison
The response, intentional or not, arrived on October 15 with a new Steam client update, which includes improvements for Big Picture mode and various fixes. The most striking demonstration came from user @girlglock_ in a video posted on X, where Steam goes from opening in 10.07 seconds to just 5.23 seconds, a figure that, interestingly, mirrors the same time Epic used in its comparison.
In practice, this means that Steam and the new Epic Games launcher now open at roughly the same speed, with a gap of merely 0.24 seconds that no player would notice, so the nearly double-speed advantage Epic advertised disappeared with a single update. That said, these are tests conducted on different machines, and Steam has not commented whether the improvement is related to the rival’s announcement.
Thus, what began as a way to brag about speed against Steam ended up becoming one of the most discussed episodes in the rivalry between the two stores, and makes clear that PC players are the winners, because now both Steam and the Epic Games launcher open considerably faster than just a few days ago.