My experience is that, if your computer is facing some kind of overload for one reason or another, he may appear to be frozen for a while, and yes, during that time, ePic is just a black screen, but if you wait it gets better.
That’s why windowed mode is useful, but then your drop down menus may end up in front of your buttons 😉 😛
For the records, I’m not running the steam version.