Following Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney's latest jabs against Steam, one former Valve dev has responded, telling the Fortnite and EGS boss that, in no uncertain terms, "you're kinda crashing out, dude."
Sweeney's beef with Valve is nothing new. He's been very loud with his criticisms before, but he's really been going for it over the last couple of weeks. After proudly proclaiming that "we vibe coded the Epic Games Launcher to be faster than the other guy," he once again slated Steam's AI disclosure policy, claiming that "forcing developers to write a political statement to be used against them by the hate mob they're helping organize is abhorrent."
More recently, he went as far as to say that "Valve has held gaming back for years by locking developers' PC games into Steamworks' social walled garden where players can't talk to other players on iOS, Android, Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, or even other PC stores." That's, uh, a questionable statement on multiple levels, and understandably, Chet Faliszek, who previously worked on Portal, Half-Life, and Left 4 Dead, has now responded with some thoughts.
In a new video on his YouTube channel (below), Faliszek suggests that some of Sweeney's behavior "is AI psychosis," but beyond that, "you're kinda crashing out, dude." First, acknowledging the CEO's comments about Steam's AI disclosures, he argues, "you're making up arguments that simply don't exist," in an attempt to back up his point.
Faliszek specifically highlights Sweeney's hypothetical of "should Valve force developers to list their political affiliation? Is that pro-consumer?" He responds: "Nobody's saying legitimately to do that."
He also points out that Epic's open digital assets marketplace, Fab, uses AI disclosures itself. "You said even if Steam removes their [AI disclosures] or not, you would still keep it up on Fab because, well, 'business, it just makes sense.' Business is political. Hmm. Hmm, Timmy. Come on. You can't have it both ways, bro."
Steam, Faliszek says, provides tools to serve what both developers and customers want, including giving players more information about what they're spending their money on – y'know, like those AI disclosures. "This is gonna sound like a dick move, but this may be something that you're not used to, is they've got a lot of people wanting to buy games on Steam," Faliszek says to Sweeney. Ouch.
"Players are just making informed choices," he continues. "Why are you treating all the players like children? Like, you're just treating players like they're stupid. Instead, act as a player yourself for a moment and go, 'What would I want to know about a game?'"
Faliszek accepts that Sweeney doesn't care about AI usage in the same way that he himself doesn't care about a game's frame rate, but that doesn't mean he's going to "get mad" if that information is listed, because he can "understand that some people want" to know.
And then we get to Sweeney's comment about Valve supposedly holding back gaming. Faliszek notes that "Valve doesn't get a lot into tools," instead opting to let the community build the tools they want and need, unlike Epic Games, which he freely admits has "an amazing set of tools" including a backend solution which "surpasses Valve's."
However, he argues, "If Valve solved every single problem for every developer, including engine and tools and everything else, you'd be screaming about the monopoly and how Valve needs to get taken down. Instead, Valve gives spaces for all of these things to exist. And they actually give tools that allow for this, but people don't use them. People use third-party stuff, and that is fine."
Wrapping things up, Faliszek suggests that Sweeney should "put your money where your mouth is" when it comes to being pro-consumer, and put Alan Wake 2 on Steam. "Will you do that? Because that's a walled garden. That's holding something back. That's anti-consumer and anti-developer," he argues.
Whether Sweeney decides to respond to this challenge is another matter, but I certainly doubt we've heard the last from him yet when it comes to the ongoing tiff between Epic and Valve.
Epic wants to pay you $50,000 to vibe code an AI slop game.
