Nearly eight years after Epic took on Steam with its own Game Store and launcher, the maker is deploying a new tool to give it an edge over Valve: vibe coding.

In announcing the new publicly available “Preview” build of its Epic Games Launcher, Epic writes that “programming is hard. So, instead of doing that, we vibe coded a new Epic Games Launcher that’s way faster and more responsive than the current one, and has a new look.” And while that might sound a little tongue-in-cheek, Epic Games Store General Manager and VP Martin Keely told PC Gamer that the team “started from scratch” and used AI as “a tool to write and review new features and new capabilities from the ground up in a different tech stack than what we had previously.” The goal, Keely said, was to “look at functionality that existed [in the current Epic Games Launcher] and [say] we want to replicate that, but not the code itself.”

Speaking to IGN, Keely clarified that using AI to code the new Launcher “made us more efficient and allowed a small team to rewrite the code base and be able to launch it faster across platforms, support Windows and Mac, and we’re going to have a Linux version as well.”

We vibe coded the Epic Games Launcher to be faster than the other guy.

Don’t believe us? Test it out for yourself in Preview:
https://t.co/pdtAeEIri4 https://t.co/aMxojUUVPV

— Epic Games Store (@EpicGames) October 14, 2026

The focus on startup speed extends to Epic’s social media announcement, which once again stresses that “we vibe coded the Epic Games Launcher to be faster than the other guy.” Ars’s own testing confirms that the new Launcher goes from a cold start to the store page a few seconds faster than Steam (assuming no login or update issues get in the way). Epic also claims the new Launcher can restore from the system tray to the Library screen slightly faster than Steam, though the claimed difference of 0.06 seconds in this seems so small as to be unnoticeable (and was in our testing).

Harder, better, faster, stronger

Epic announced a ground-up “storefront rearchitecture” and “Launcher V2 private Beta” in an Unreal Fest presentation in June. At the time, the company said the new Launcher would have “5x faster cold start” times and help solve challenges that “every developer in this room and every player” has experienced with the current Launcher.

The term “vibe coding” still carries heavy connotations of quickly thrown-together slop that could hide crucial errors beneath the surface. On social media, Epic warns that its Launcher Preview “will have some bugs” that early testers can help squash with a feedback form. The announcement post also warns that the vibe-coded Preview is currently “light on features”—an FAQ clarifies that “certain social features and account management options” haven’t made it over from the legacy version just yet.

That said, the new Preview launcher adds some long-requested features like a Recent Games list and a centralized downloads hub for tracking network activity. And Epic writes that it is “working toward feature parity” between the new Launcher and the old one.

Epic’s release of the new “vibe coded” Launcher preview comes just days after a Bloomberg report suggesting the company is pivoting to an “AI first” development model for an upcoming Star Wars and Marvel-themed shooter. “We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic, moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration,” Epic CEO Tim Sweeney wrote on social media on Monday. “The aim isn’t to do the same stuff with fewer people, but to enable everyone here to build MORE and BETTER stuff, and to bring the benefits to all teams using Unreal.”