EpicWebHelper.exe - Why is this included?

[icezolation]

Hey there,

would like to know why the EpicWebHelper.exe is included in the game and runs in the background (my process viewer is showing me three instances of it).

I don't have EGS or any other product by Epic installed - care to elaborate?

Apart from that I'm enjoying this companion game too much already

Thank you!

[K dawg]

Heya!
Copy-pasting a response from our discord, since it was also asked there. 🙂
"epicWebHelper.exe" is simply the background process for the web browser in the game that allows you to play any music from Youtube. Rest assured there's no additional software installed on your machine or anything like that. We devs don't have any control over that, that's just how the web browser plugin works.

[icezolation]

Thank you for the explanation!

Since the background progress seems to always run regardless of using the web browser plugin or not, an option for disabling the web browser on the long run - if possible at all - would be appreciated.

[K dawg]

Noted! It's something we'll look into when we can!
Thank you for your understanding! 💗

[Lokthar]

Once, I had closed Spirit City and I went on FF14. After a short time, I suddenly dropped to 5fps with a disturbing sound coming from my speakers, and I thought my computer was going to crash.
While looking for the cause after emergency closing the game, I saw that an epicWebHelper.exe was using 100% of my SSD memory, so I forced the shutdown (I haven't touched the launcher for over 2 months). I should have taken a screenshot, but I was panicking at the thought of having a virus. I even sent many messages to Epic Games customer service to ask them for explanations, but they didn't understand the problem...

Since I no longer touch Spirit City, I have never had this problem again.
Even in the demo, it never did that to me.

[Snipe]

Originally posted by icezolation:

Thank you for the explanation!

Since the background progress seems to always run regardless of using the web browser plugin or not, an option for disabling the web browser on the long run - if possible at all - would be appreciated.

For a temp solution, navigate to Steam\steamapps\common\Spirit City Lofi Sessions\Engine\Binaries\Win64 and just delete EpicWebHelper.exe

Note, this completely disables the web music player until you restore the file.

I had 8 instances of this Epic trash running in the BG. Gone now thankfully.

You would be surprised how many games actually have Epic BS weaved into them.... I am on steam to get away from Epic, yet more and more games have Epic garbage in them, harvesting my data.

[Xeriath]

Originally posted by Snipe:

Originally posted by icezolation:

Thank you for the explanation!

Since the background progress seems to always run regardless of using the web browser plugin or not, an option for disabling the web browser on the long run - if possible at all - would be appreciated.

For a temp solution, navigate to Steam\steamapps\common\Spirit City Lofi Sessions\Engine\Binaries\Win64 and just delete EpicWebHelper.exe

Note, this completely disables the web music player until you restore the file.

I had 8 instances of this Epic trash running in the BG. Gone now thankfully.

You would be surprised how many games actually have Epic BS weaved into them.... I am on steam to get away from Epic, yet more and more games have Epic garbage in them, harvesting my data.

Thank you, I saw that 5 instance was active of them. I am in a state which I only want to get the level achievements done. I never used their inbuild web browser.

[icezolation]

Originally posted by Snipe:

Originally posted by icezolation:

Thank you for the explanation!

Since the background progress seems to always run regardless of using the web browser plugin or not, an option for disabling the web browser on the long run - if possible at all - would be appreciated.

For a temp solution, navigate to Steam\steamapps\common\Spirit City Lofi Sessions\Engine\Binaries\Win64 and just delete EpicWebHelper.exe

Note, this completely disables the web music player until you restore the file.

I had 8 instances of this Epic trash running in the BG. Gone now thankfully.

You would be surprised how many games actually have Epic BS weaved into them.... I am on steam to get away from Epic, yet more and more games have Epic garbage in them, harvesting my data.

Helpful - did just that! Thanks a bunch.

[Whimsy]

Originally posted by Snipe:

Originally posted by icezolation:

Thank you for the explanation!

Since the background progress seems to always run regardless of using the web browser plugin or not, an option for disabling the web browser on the long run - if possible at all - would be appreciated.

For a temp solution, navigate to Steam\steamapps\common\Spirit City Lofi Sessions\Engine\Binaries\Win64 and just delete EpicWebHelper.exe

Note, this completely disables the web music player until you restore the file.

I had 8 instances of this Epic trash running in the BG. Gone now thankfully.

You would be surprised how many games actually have Epic BS weaved into them.... I am on steam to get away from Epic, yet more and more games have Epic garbage in them, harvesting my data.

Thank you for this; now my game doesn't take forever to load because of being stuck as a black screen on launch.

Why is this even enabled by default? I never used a web browser in the game, yet my game launched with 7 epicwebhelpers running, making the game unresponsive.

[Naliyah]

Originally posted by Snipe:

Originally posted by icezolation:

Thank you for the explanation!

Since the background progress seems to always run regardless of using the web browser plugin or not, an option for disabling the web browser on the long run - if possible at all - would be appreciated.

For a temp solution, navigate to Steam\steamapps\common\Spirit City Lofi Sessions\Engine\Binaries\Win64 and just delete EpicWebHelper.exe

Note, this completely disables the web music player until you restore the file.

I had 8 instances of this Epic trash running in the BG. Gone now thankfully.

You would be surprised how many games actually have Epic BS weaved into them.... I am on steam to get away from Epic, yet more and more games have Epic garbage in them, harvesting my data.

Thanks for that! I don't want this garbage on my computer either

[Silvi the Bun]

Originally posted by Snipe:

Originally posted by icezolation:

Thank you for the explanation!

Since the background progress seems to always run regardless of using the web browser plugin or not, an option for disabling the web browser on the long run - if possible at all - would be appreciated.

For a temp solution, navigate to Steam\steamapps\common\Spirit City Lofi Sessions\Engine\Binaries\Win64 and just delete EpicWebHelper.exe

Note, this completely disables the web music player until you restore the file.

I had 8 instances of this Epic trash running in the BG. Gone now thankfully.

You would be surprised how many games actually have Epic BS weaved into them.... I am on steam to get away from Epic, yet more and more games have Epic garbage in them, harvesting my data.

I can confirm this fixed the game being really slow to launch.

[ꉔꏂ꒐꒒ꇙ]

Originally posted by K dawg:

Noted! It's something we'll look into when we can

I think it'll just be better to let people upload their own music instead of using a "web browser" option that seems to cause everyone issues (read posts above)

Maybe a way for the game to open up a music folder/file you choose from your PC (or if we can just click/drag music files to a music folder in the game and we can create a playlist with them, like the pre-made playlists in-game already)

Edit: and yeah, leave Epic Games stuff to Epic Games. That shouldn't be mixed with a Steam game.

[Mooncube Games]

Originally posted by Silvi the Bun:

Originally posted by Snipe:

For a temp solution, navigate to Steam\steamapps\common\Spirit City Lofi Sessions\Engine\Binaries\Win64 and just delete EpicWebHelper.exe

Note, this completely disables the web music player until you restore the file.

I had 8 instances of this Epic trash running in the BG. Gone now thankfully.

You would be surprised how many games actually have Epic BS weaved into them.... I am on steam to get away from Epic, yet more and more games have Epic garbage in them, harvesting my data.

I can confirm this fixed the game being really slow to launch.

Snipe & Silvi the Bun, thanks for confirming this issue with the web helper process! This is gonna help us debug the loading issue quickly.

About the web music browser in-game, we think it can still add great value for those who will want to browse Youtube, although we understand that it's causing some issues right now. Instead of removing it completely for everyone, we'll be looking for ways to only have it enabled when it is active, instead of booting along with the game. And of course, we'd like for players to be able to import their own local files later, more options is always better!

Thank you for the feedback, please let us know if anything else comes up!

[Silvi the Bun]

Originally posted by Mooncube Games:

Originally posted by Silvi the Bun:

I can confirm this fixed the game being really slow to launch.

Snipe & Silvi the Bun, thanks for confirming this issue with the web helper process! This is gonna help us debug the loading issue quickly.

About the web music browser in-game, we think it can still add great value for those who will want to browse Youtube, although we understand that it's causing some issues right now. Instead of removing it completely for everyone, we'll be looking for ways to only have it enabled when it is active, instead of booting along with the game. And of course, we'd like for players to be able to import their own local files later, more options is always better!

Thank you for the feedback, please let us know if anything else comes up!

A follow up to it, sadly the fix of erasing the file only seemed to speed up a specific case of this, the game still does load very slow at the start.

However there definitely was an issue with this file as well.

So it seems both this file and something else is causing the slow load.

[Whimsy]

Originally posted by Silvi the Bun:

Originally posted by Mooncube Games:

Snipe & Silvi the Bun, thanks for confirming this issue with the web helper process! This is gonna help us debug the loading issue quickly.

About the web music browser in-game, we think it can still add great value for those who will want to browse Youtube, although we understand that it's causing some issues right now. Instead of removing it completely for everyone, we'll be looking for ways to only have it enabled when it is active, instead of booting along with the game. And of course, we'd like for players to be able to import their own local files later, more options is always better!

Thank you for the feedback, please let us know if anything else comes up!

A follow up to it, sadly the fix of erasing the file only seemed to speed up a specific case of this, the game still does load very slow at the start.

However there definitely was an issue with this file as well.

So it seems both this file and something else is causing the slow load.

I seem to have the same problem as you; deleting the file only fixed it temporarily. I just tried setting the frame rate to 20, and it seems to have fixed the slow load on my end and significantly lowered CPU usage in general.

[ꉔꏂ꒐꒒ꇙ]

Originally posted by Whimsy:

Originally posted by Silvi the Bun:

A follow up to it, sadly the fix of erasing the file only seemed to speed up a specific case of this, the game still does load very slow at the start.

However there definitely was an issue with this file as well.

So it seems both this file and something else is causing the slow load.

I seem to have the same problem as you; deleting the file only fixed it temporarily. I just tried setting the frame rate to 20, and it seems to have fixed the slow load on my end and significantly lowered CPU usage in general.

I think it only works the first or so times after deleting the file. I think graphics play a part too, like they do for a lot of games and their load times.

There are no graphic settings in this game so, you are stuck on whatever graphics they picked for you. I know if I was able to disable or lower some stuff (not Framerate) it would give me a good boost and load up faster.

I was thinking "how can a game not have graphic settings?" but then thought about it and was like "well, it isn't an open world game and blah blah blah"

The game looks good though, has a lot of effects and ton of things going on (if you use a ton of things/sounds at once) it just needs some graphic options. Let people fully disable/lower things.