In brief: Despite great holiday sales and free game giveaways, many PC users still (somewhat understandably) dislike the Epic Games Store. Today, it seems Epic has given its detractors yet another piece of ammunition: a recent bug was causing those with select CPUs to see significant temperature spikes when the Epic Games Store app was open.

Closing the app reduced temperatures by as much as 20C for some, whereas others -- such as Redditor Neoncarbon -- regained a more modest 13C.

Temperature and usage spikes wouldn't be surprising if an Epic Games Store game was running, but here, the app itself is causing problems, which is unacceptable. A game launcher running in the background should not be impacting CPU performance in any noticeable way.

Fortunately, Epic's director of publishing strategy, Sergiy Galyonkin, says the team is aware of the issue. Indeed, as of writing, a hotfix has already been released. It's not a "full solution," but Galyonkin says things "should improve."

The hotfix is live now (11.0.2). It's not a full solution, but things should improve.

— Sergiy Galyonkin (@galyonkin) December 29, 2020

Galyonkin is perhaps being a bit conservative with that statement, though, as the issue seems to be fixed for most. Some speculate that the high CPU usage/temperature bug is related to the Epic Games Store app thinking the main store page is in use even when the app is minimized, or when a different page is in focus.

Regardless, if you're still encountering the bug even with the Epic Games Store app minimized, either sit tight or close the program for a few days: more fixes are undoubtedly on the way.