Preloading is now available to developers on Epic Games Store
This long awaited feature is finally available, alongside other improvements
It’s no secret that one of the biggest things the Epic Games Store lacks is features, initially launching in 2018 extremely barebones of being superglued to the side of a launcher specifically designed to download and manage the Unreal Engine the store has been slowly adding features, Cloud Saves, Achievements, Gift Card Wallets, Cashback Rewards and perhaps the most famous, a Cart! Today an email has been sent to developers that are signed up to the Epic Games Store newsletter that details new features such as Preloading and a dedicated Add-On page specifically for the Epic Games Mobile Store is joining a growing list of features.
Preloading had been a sore spot for the store, during Epic’s Epic Games Store 2025 Update at Unreal Fest 2025 with Steve Allison, Vice-President at Epic and General Manager of Epic Games Store, and Kyle Billings, Director in Portfolio Strategy and Business Operations it is mentioned that not having preloading has not only been a long time coming but the slow speed of delivery on this feature has been a costly omission for them. Specifically noting that the lack of preloading for large, anticipated games such as GameScience’s Black Myth: Wukong impacted them greatly, with Steve Allison mentioning seeing upwards of 10,000 preorderes being cancelled when preloading was available on other platforms such as Steam and PlayStation with users opting to cancel their order on Epic and opting to go else where as preloading was not available.
Not only were preloads announced to be available to developers but interestingly enhancements to “download security” for the store was announced. Introducing entitlement verification at the CDN level for downloading and patching games, I can only assume this is being done to tighten up security on accessing games and possibly clamp down on account sharing. It’s said that eventually people will be forced to update their launcher to version 18.7 otherwise they may be blocked from downloading and updating games.
Alongside this the newsletter also announced that Add-On pages will become available on the Epic Games Mobile Store for Android and iOS, allowing developers to make standalone pages for DLC for their games which Epic states will “enable publishers to promote and sell add-on offers for their games”. It’s good to see that the mobile store is still a priority for the Fortnite makers after fighting a hard fight against the two major mobile phone developers, Google and Apple.
The other notable update in this newsletter update is the creation of an interface for the tool used to create and upload builds to the Epic Games Store. Previously this was done entirely in the command prompt or command line interface (CLI), but an update has been released that gives this nice shiny GUI that makes it easier for developers to get a build ready for release on the store. Epic does state that the CLI is still supported but this gives more options to those that may prefer a GUI over the CLI.
The Epic Games Store has often been criticized for its glacial pace at delivery features and I believe that is warranted, although I would be hard pressed to say that the store has come a long way since its initial release and it’s good to see that features are still being worked on, with the other major feature for this year planned to be Gifting which is currently aiming for the end of the year according to the talks given by Epic Employees at Game Developers Conference and also at Epic’s own Unreal Fest this year.
