Epic Games entry into the digital video game market caused ripples of conflicting responses from players and notable personalities. Many embraced the entrance of a brand new storefront looking to shake Steam's iron grip on the market but not everyone felt that way. Several players aired grievances towards Epic Games' dubious practices of “buying out” exclusive games. This essentially caused a rift between players on the PC platform. Now, after a rigorous testing spree by PC World, the Epic Games Store has another issue that may cause players to steer away from the store entirely.

EPIC GAMES STORE'S NON-EPIC FAULT

In an extensive report by PC World, the Epic Games allegedly consumes an unnecessary amount of Laptop battery energy even on idle. The experiments led to a conclusion that the EGS drains as much as 20% off of battery life even when not launching games. Undoubtedly, this causes concerns for many PC players, especially for those playing on gaming laptops.

The researchers stumbled upon this problem while testing out a new Microsoft Surface Pro 7+ tablet that uses the latest Intel “Tiger Lake” Core processor. The discovery of a potential problem ignited rigorous testing across a variety of conditions. Epic Games responded to a query by the investigation team stating that they are working on improving their platform. Naturally, Epic Games would want to run their own tests before promising any substantial changes to its storefront.

“In general, we are actively working to improve the performance and reduce the power consumption of our launcher. The power consumption varies based on whether the launcher’s window is open.”

The numbers from the experiments prove to be conclusive but further testing is required across a wide variety of hardware. Subsequently, the researchers stated that it could not replicate the same harsh results with AMD-driven laptops.

Above all, the conclusion for the investigation points away from blaming Epic Games Store for being a power vacuum. The researchers hoped to spread awareness of the harm hidden and idle programs cause to battery life. Hopefully, we'll all be a little more careful with all our software running in the background.