Users found that Epic Games Launcher was CPU intensive and sending telemetry data even when idle

In the picture above, Epic Games Launcher is not running, below is idle

Reddit users discovered that Epic Games Launcher loads the PC’s CPU even when idle. For the most part, this applies to systems based on AMD Ryzen. For example, a Ryzen 7 5800X processor with just running the launcher heats up to 50 ° C. When unloading this software, the chip temperature drops to 37 ° C.

Additionally, users have noticed that the Epic Games Launcher continues to send telemetry data when no games are running. Users estimate that the launcher sends ten times more information than the Steam client does.

By information portal HotHardware, this is a really common problem, and the software manufacturer is not going to solve it. Similar apps like GOG and Steam don’t show such activity when idle.

HotHardware experts tested Epic Games Launcher on several PC configurations and found that it is active and uses the processor almost all the time when it is just started. And this is not related to the process of updating games in the background.

It also turned out that after loading the launcher, five different processes are launched simultaneously. Epic Games Launcher and its associated processes at regular intervals send telemetry data to 22 different servers on the Internet, including recipients on the AWS platform, for example, tracking-website-prod07-epic-961842049.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws. com. Up to 1 MB of telemetry data can be transferred by the launcher in idle time per hour. That’s 14x what the Steam and NVIDIA GeForce Experience apps send out.

Users suggested that the current version of the launcher needs some work and optimization. At the moment, it remains only to force the launcher process to end in the task manager, or, alternatively, try to link Epic Games Launcher with GOG Galaxy, which automatically unloads the launcher if the games are closed. This situation is especially critical for laptop owners. Several users reported that their laptops show 8 hours of battery life, and after launching Epic Games Launcher, the system shows that 3 or 4 hours of battery life is available.

This isn’t the first issue with the Epic Games Launcher. Last year users discovered that the launcher is looking for the installed Steam in the system, copies the data from the user profile from there and sends it to the Epic servers. Software developer replied that this is actually done, but not secretly, but with the consent of users.