Valve makes Steam boot times faster in response to Epic Games’ new launcher
It took Valve less than 24 hours to make Steam faster than Epic Games’ new launcher
Shortly after Epic Games released its new launcher, Valve released a Steam Client update that dramatically reduces Steam’s launch times. This undermines Epic Games’ claim that its new game launcher is faster than Steam. That said, the main draw of Epic’s improved launcher is that it is much faster than its old launcher, not necessarily faster than Steam.
Yesterday, Epic Games claimed that their new launcher started 46% faster than Steam. Now, Valve has sped up Steam’s launch times, and early testers claim Steam now boots marginally faster than the new Epic Games launcher.
Valve’s latest Steam Client update says it “improved Steam Client startup times”. Sadly, Valve hasn’t said how much faster the updated client is.
According to @grilglock_ on X, their Steam client now starts up in 5.23 seconds on their system. This is faster than the stated Epic Games Store launch times above. Note that while this test highlights improvements in Steam’s launch times, we have not seen how fast the new Epic Games launcher boots on this system. The results above average 13 different Windows PCs. If this 5.23-second boot time comes from a faster-than-average PC, the new Epic Games launcher could still be faster.
More scientific testing is required before we can confirm which launcher is the fastest.
this is such a good day to be a sweeney hater.. not even 24h later lmao https://t.co/hjf5Q9NV3C pic.twitter.com/XXLcIqYTT7
— dea (@girlglock_) October 15, 2026
Did Valve plan this?
One thing’s for certain: Valve’s timing here is interesting. Epic Games confirmed in June that it was building a new launcher and that it would be faster. This likely gave Valve the time they needed to work on Steam’s startup times. While it is possible that Valve timed this update to undermine Epic Games, it is equally likely that this update’s timing is just a coincidence. Regardless, Valve has undermined Epic Games’ newfound advantage with their newest Steam client update. While it is unclear which app is faster, the difference between the two is now likely to be negligible.
Join the discussion on Steam’s reduced client startup times on the OC3D Forums.
