Even four years after its initial release, the Epic Games launcher is still posing problems to PC players - even those with very capable hardware.
This illustration picture shows the logo from Epic Games displayed on a laptop and a reflected Apple Logo on an iPhone in Arlington, Virginia on April 30, 2021. - In a court clash with potentially huge repercussions for the world of mobile tech, Fortnite maker Epic Games takes on Apple starting on May 3, 2021, aiming to break the grip of the iPhone maker on its online marketplace.
GameRant reported of a specific Reddit user called DidierNisma who posted a video of the launcher taking basically forever to launch. 2 minutes and 30 seconds isn't really a lot of time, but to gamers, that is an eternity - you really just want to play games as quickly as possible. The post has since been removed for some reason.
Another post on the Epic Games subreddit mentioned how the launcher takes around 20 seconds to load up. The post has also been removed, but many folks were joking about how fast this is compared to theirs. That is a very obvious problem, considering how Epic Games is putting their launcher in direct competition with Steam. But that's not even the end of the issues at hand.
One commenter said that 20 seconds or so is to get the launcher itself up and to run. It might take as much time (or even more) to load into the game library section, where people can start their games. Again, that's a massive problem if Epic wants to even compete with Steam, whose launcher basically loads up in the blink of an eye in comparison.
To help fix the slow loading time, commenters advised DidierNisma to uninstall the app alongside Epic Online Services via their PC's Control Panel, then reinstall it. Afterward, they were also advised to check their %appdata%/Local folder for an "Epic Games" related subfolder and delete it. However, the problem with this is that it will uninstall all installed games - which is another issue considering how download speeds can also slow down to a snail's pace.
The Epic Games launcher's lagging is perhaps the only thing that's keeping it from truly competing with Steam - even if the company has already given a ton of free games in recent years.
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Why Is The Epic Games Launcher Lagging So Much/Loading So Slow?
This is a question that so many PC gamers these days ask whenever they use the aforementioned launcher. For some reason, Epic itself still hasn't figured out the issue themselves - though they did take several steps to find out the root cause.
In a Twitter post dated December 17th last year, Epic has mentioned how the team is "continuing to investigate" slow loading times alongside purchasing errors on the launcher and the desktop site. Some fans still weren't too thrilled, which illustrates just how deep the issues run:
We’re continuing to investigate slow loading times and purchase errors for some players on the site and Launcher. We’ll provide an update as soon as possible.
— Epic Games Store (@EpicGames) December 17, 2021
Our teams are actively working on a solve. Thank you for your patience!
All of the Epic Games launcher's lagging issues are now more or less forcing people to find alternatives. WindowsCentral wrote about one called Legendary, which is designed to entirely replace Epic's launcher. While making the thing run does require a bit of delving into computer code, it doesn't use up a lot of system resources once you get it up and running. And when you do, you'll have access to all of your games on Epic's launcher without having to use it at all:
