“Epic Games Launcher is clunky” admits CEO, “long journey ahead” to make it as easy as Steam
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Epic Games has faced its fair share of trouble over the past few years, especially its long-standing legal battle with Apple, which eventually ended in a win for Epic. Shortly after the ruling, CEO Tim Sweeney was quick to take swipes at other digital distribution platforms, including Steam, as he announced major changes to the Epic Games Store aimed at giving developers even more incentive to use their platform.
Still, even with these updates, it's hard to see the Epic Games Store catching up to Steam. Despite Steam retaining its 30% cut with developers, it continues to dominate thanks to its much larger user base and greater visibility. During his appearance on the Lex Fridman Podcast, Sweeney was asked about the ongoing criticism and constant comparisons to Steam, particularly the claim that the Epic Games Store lacks many of the features that make Steam fun.
“It's not our goal to mimic everything of Steam”, says Tim Sweeney
CEO Tim Sweeney began his response by admitting, “The Epic Games Launcher is clunky, and we need to improve this.” He went on to say that he wishes the company had done a better job prioritizing quality-of-life features over commercial ones, such as merchandising, selling multiple editions of a game, or offering upgrade paths from standard versions.
He also acknowledged Steam’s advantage, pointing out that it has over 15 years of work behind it, built by some of the best programmers in the industry, saying that Epic still has a long way to go before it can match Steam in terms of polish and ease of use. But he made it clear he doesn’t want to replicate Steam entirely, and instead of bringing features like Steam Forums, Epic’s goal is to focus on the core convenience features that make using Steam simple and enjoyable.
“One of the criticisms of Epic Game Store from the beginning was, ‘You don't have all of the features of Steam’, but we very much don't want to have all of the features of Steam. Steam has forums dedicated to your game, and we decide we don't want to create forums.
And so it's very much not our goal to mimic everything of Steam, but we do want to have all of the convenience features that makes it as easy and fun to use as Steam. So there’s a long journey ahead.”
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney on the Lex Fridman Podcast
Tim also said that as gaming continues to shift toward a multi-platform future, Epic's approach may offer greater advantages compared to Steam's. He pointed out that, unlike the Epic Online Services and its social systems that are designed to make cross-platform features seamless, Steam's social ecosystem remains limited to its own platform. So it’s clear that Epic not only aims to bring the best quality of life Steam features into their platform but also plans to bring what Steam, according to them, lacks.
We recommend checking out the full discussion in the video below, where Sweeney discusses a wide range of topics from the Unreal Engine, indie game development, and the greatest video games ever made.
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