Epic Games released a preview of its rebuilt and “vibration-encoded” Epic Games Launcher on October 14, and took a direct shot of Steam while doing so. Epic’s own graph shows the new launcher cold boots in 5.47 seconds versus Steam’s 10.07 seconds, which the company considers 46% faster. That advantage apparently didn’t last long, as a clip posted by user girlglock_ on X shows the current Steam client starting at 5.23 seconds. Although it may seem like it at first, this is not a hasty response from Valve. The Steam client stable update listing “Improved Steam Client startup performance” is dated October 13, a day before Epic’s announcement, and the Steam beta client was already receiving startup improvements in September. However, Valve has not shared any numbers. 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 excluded, so they were likely taken on an older version of Steam. Results will vary from PC to PC, of course. Epic’s launcher is also feature-light for now, and the company advises competitive Fortnite and Rocket League players to stick with the current launcher during the preview. It runs natively on Linux, and Fortnite will follow once Epic finishes rebuilding its anti-cheat system, and the vibration coding part fits with Epic’s recent shift toward AI-first development. Readers are advised to treat both sets of starting numbers as rough guides. The startup time is just one line in what is a pretty massive Steam update. The October 13 release moves much of what Valve has been testing in the beta to the stable channel, starting with Big Art Mode, which can be enabled from the Home settings and fills the background with highlighted game artwork. Big Picture mode also includes screensavers, the default one scrolling through art from recently played games and your own in-game screenshots, along with a retro-style bouncing logo. Custom screen savers are also supported and there is now a setting to keep them disabled while you are in the 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 system button on the controller can now switch a TV to the Steam Machine, as long as the TV supports HDMI CEC. The full changelog lasts much longer, with many fixes to Steam entries, overlays, and game recordings.
