Epic Games released a preview of its rebuilt, “vibe coded” Epic Games Launcher on October 14, and took a direct shot at Steam while at it. Epic’s own chart shows the new launcher cold starting in 5.47 seconds against 10.07 seconds for Steam, which the company bills as 46% faster. That lead apparently didn’t last long, as a clip posted by user girlglock_ on X shows the current Steam client starting in 5.23 seconds. Although it might seem like it at first, this isn’t a rushed reply from Valve. The stable Steam Client Update that lists “Improved Steam Client startup performance” is dated October 13, a day before Epic’s announcement, and Steam’s beta client was already getting startup improvements back in September. Valve hasn’t shared any numbers for it, though.
Epic’s figures, on the other hand, come from testing it commissioned from Keywords Studios earlier this month, averaging five runs on 13 machines with the three lowest-end systems left out, so they were probably taken on an older Steam build. Results will vary from one PC to the next, of course. Epic’s launcher is also light on features for now, and the company advises competitive Fortnite and Rocket League players to stay on the current launcher during the preview. It does run natively on Linux, with Fortnite set to follow once Epic finishes rebuilding its anti-cheat, and the vibe coding part fits Epic’s recent shift to AI-first development. Readers are advised to treat both sets of startup numbers as rough guides.
Startup time is only one line in what is a fairly massive Steam update. The October 13 release moves a lot of what Valve has been testing in beta over to the stable channel, starting with Big Art Mode, which can be enabled from the Home settings and fills the background with the highlighted game’s artwork. Big Picture Mode also gets screensavers, with the default one cycling through art from recently played games and your own in-game screenshots, alongside a retro-style bouncing logo. Custom screensavers are supported as well, and there’s now a setting to keep them off while in game.
A Personal Calendar has also been added to the Recommended tab on the Home screen. Elsewhere, Remote Play gets an experimental video codec called Pyrowave, aimed at high-bandwidth, low-latency streaming, and download speeds on high-latency connections should be better. On Linux, Windows programs added as non-Steam games now run through Proton by default. The Steam Controller firmware adds a second Bluetooth pairing slot, and pressing the controller’s system button can now switch a TV over to the Steam Machine, provided the TV supports HDMI CEC. The full changelog runs much longer, with plenty of Steam Input, overlay and game recording fixes on top.
