The only solid competitor to Steam, the Epic Games Store intends to revamp its launcher to be more in tune with gamers.
When you play on a PC, chances are you do so via the platform invented by Valve at the turn of the century, Steam. Of course, there are many competing services such as Ubisoft Connect, Battle.net, GOG... and, impossible not to mention, Epic Games Store. Created by Fortnite's publisher - Epic Games - the platform is a must-have in today's gaming landscape, thanks to the success of its mainstay, Fortnite, but also to the free games that the service has been releasing weekly since its launch: enough to build up a nice library of games without having to go out of pocket.
For developers, too, the Epic Games Store seems to be an excellent solution: while Valve takes a 30% commission on game sales via Steam, Epic Games is content with 12% on its platform. The number of games available on the Epic Games Store has risen sharply and rapidly: we can't yet put it on a par with Steam, but it's well ahead of all other services. However, not everything is rosy on the Epic Games Store, and Steven Allison - the platform's vice-president - didn't mince his words in an interview with Eurogamer: " Let's call a spade a spade, our launcher sucks ".
The Epic Games Store is about to get a facelift © Epic Games
It's an admission that the man doesn't make "in the air", and behind this shocking formulation lies a declaration of intent: that of developing the launcher to compete with Valve and its Steam. Currently, Epic Games' launcher " doesn't offer any social aspects, unlike other platforms, even consoles, which allow you to communicate with your friends. We simply removed this feature during the Covid pandemic and never reinstated it ". Steve Allison explains that the platform had to win over developers: " They didn't want to end up with an infrastructure where we had to manage everything manually. [...] So we focused on that aspect.
Today, however, and since last November in fact, the priority is different. Epic Games intends to " integrate community spaces into its platform, adding avatars, player profiles and private messaging to cross-platform text chat ". There's also talk of offering " a forum of sorts ", and Steve Allison explains that " in two years' time, we won't need this discussion anymore ", referring to the Reddit channel devoted to the mediocrity of the Epic Games Store launcher, before concluding with a " players will be thrilled when these features are available, and we absolutely must implement them as soon as possible ". We just have to believe him...
