Epic recently shared its yearly numbers for the Epic Games Store. These reports showed a significant rise in money spent on games made by other companies, and also confirmed that fewer people are playing Fortnite these days. But on top of these numbers, the company that makes games, game engines, and runs the store itself is also saying they plan to make big changes to the store that many people have complained about.
The main improvements people can expect are a much faster store, more features for players to connect with each other, and a way to see your game library on both your computer and your phone.
Steven Allison, who is in charge of the Epic Games Store, told us in an interview, “We have a lot of things that need fixing. We’ve needed to fix them for a long time. We were really focused on making tools for game makers. But last year, we finally started putting more of our effort into making things better for the players – all the things our players have asked for, wanted, and that critics have rightly pointed out.”
He added, “We got a lot done last year, and this year will likely be the best year for these major improvements. And the biggest issue is that the launcher just isn’t good. Let’s be honest about it. It’s really slow.”
Allison explained, “It constantly checks with our servers every time you click on something. Depending on how fast your internet is, you might have to wait a few seconds. That doesn’t feel good, especially when people are comparing it to other stores that don’t have this problem.”
He mentioned that work on fixing the store’s system began in November 2025 and is going well. They are essentially replacing the old parts with new ones. These speed improvements should start showing up for players around May or June, with Epic’s official announcement saying “this summer.”
Allison hopes that players will notice the difference, saying, “It should start to feel good, be faster, and people will say, ‘Wow, it doesn’t suck as much anymore.’ That would be a success for us.”
This was a very open admission from Allison, who seems to know that Epic has faced a lot of complaints about how the store works. Another common complaint is that the Epic Games Store doesn’t have as many features as its main competitors, like Steam. This is also something they are finally planning to fix. Allison continued, “We don’t have a social system in the store like other stores do. Even game consoles let you talk to your friends, and we kind of removed that during the pandemic and never brought it back.”
Because of this, Epic plans to add ‘community spaces’ to the Epic Games Store. This will include player profiles, private messages, and text chat that works across different devices. They will also add voice chat and the ability to form groups that aren’t tied to a specific game, starting in the second quarter of this year, which Allison specified as May. A game library that works on multiple devices will arrive in the fall, along with new ways to manage your library, stores that show prices for your region, and the store will launch on iOS in Japan in March and Brazil in June.
These changes are the first real steps toward fixing many of the problems players have had over the years, from missing social features to things like user reviews. Allison also mentioned another feature that should be popular with people who miss the old days of online forums: “a kind of forum-like experience.” This is expected to start testing later this year.
The big question many are asking is why it has taken the company, which has plenty of money, so long to add these basic features.
Allison explained that it was a “two-sided market” and “very complicated and difficult” at first. When the store first opened, it had a huge number of users – about 30 million in the first 14 months. This meant they had to focus mainly on making things good for game developers. “We had to get developers on board, and they weren’t going to work with a system where we had to do everything by hand for them,” he said. He added that they focused on this because “free games were so effective at the beginning” to attract players to match the developers.
Allison also pointed out that the store was launched as the “tip of the spear” to encourage developers to get a much better deal, earning 88 percent of sales compared to Steam’s 12 percent. This is a big difference from Steam’s well-known 30 percent cut, which is currently being looked at in a large lawsuit in the UK.
“It’s not that we ignored it,” Allison said. “But we had to stop manually onboarding important games. We had to build tools for developers to publish their own games, and that took us almost three years. It was a major focus for our engineers.”
At the same time, Allison said he understood the problems players had with the store. Now, the company is spending “most of our engineering time, focus, and resources on features for players that we know we need to deliver.”
“The criticism is all fair…” he continued. He mentioned a very direct online group called “r/fuckepic,” saying, “There are people who feel that way, and we respect that. But we know players will be happy when these features arrive, and we just have to get them done.”
He expressed hope that in about two years, this conversation won’t be happening anymore. He believes the multi-platform features will be great, and the social features might even be better than what others are offering. The goal within that time is for Epic to no longer be “behind on expected features.”
“We are trying to address all the major areas that people have fair complaints about, and we have to do the work. We just have to do the work.”
