Epic Games signed up for criticism this week by positioning its work-in-progress Epic Games Store launcher overhaul as a showcase of generative AI's capabilities, boasting of how "we vibe coded the Epic Games Launcher" and insisting that "programming is hard." The response from some players and developers has waffled between cringe and condemnation. Former Valve writer Chet Faliszek, a veteran of Half-life and Left 4 Dead among other series, certainly shares in some of this criticism. He also asks an important question which may be missed in the sheer volume of AI backlash: what is Epic actually trying to accomplish here?
In a video response to Epic's launcher announcement, Faliszek is flabbergasted by the company's decision to lead, in its blog post, with the message that, "Programming is hard. So, instead of doing that, we vibe coded a new Epic Games Launcher that’s way faster and more responsive than the current one, and has a new look."
"I saw this online and I had to go look it up because I couldn't believe this is true," Faliszek says. He notes that "the only customer-facing thing that would get a customer excited here is that it has a new look."
Like several others, Faliszek also lingers on the second paragraph of Epic's announcement. It reads: "This first release is light on features. Think of it as a speedboat and not a yacht! Though it does have advanced digital commerce technology such as a shopping cart."
Faliszek, not unreasonably, interprets this as the latest jab from Epic, specifically CEO Tim Sweeney, at Valve over co-founder Gabe Newell's yacht collection. Sweeney has made it all too easy to read such comments this way: earlier this year, when Valve hiked the price of the Steam Deck amid our AI-driven component crisis, Sweeney lamented "severe disruptions in the component parts supply chain for megayachts."
"We are in the second paragraph of their announcement and little Tim is so obsessed with Gabe that he has to try to frame a cheap shot against Gabe," Faliszek says. "If you've ever seen Tim posting online, he talks about Gabe's yachts obsessively. This is not an accident."
Later, Faliszek questions the crew overseeing Epic's communications, claiming that "a bunch of people I used to know there that were really smart about how to communicate and talk about these kinds of things are gone."
"And I think they're gone, because it's like, 'Little Timmy, make sure you make a jab at Gabe,'" he jokes. "'Where should we put it? First paragraph?' 'No, no second. We'll be subtle. We'll be subtle. No one will catch it.'"
If only through Unreal Engine and Fortnite, to say nothing of the old asset store that Faliszek calls "so good," Epic really has been a massive contributor to the forward march of games. The company's whole-chest pivot to generative AI, with Sweeney among the loudest AI evangelists in the industry, has been held up by some as yet another sign of the times. If a company of this scale and experience is embracing gen AI in this way, surely there is something to it. (Newell is also a massive proponent of gen AI.)
But the results of AI integration remain the sticking point, and here again, Faliszek suggests, Epic doesn't have a lot to show for all its vibe coding. Talk of the technology is overshadowing the actual user experience, which is where the Epic Games Store has always trailed Steam, no matter how fast it loads.
"What is their North Star and what is yours?" he wonders. Faliszek sums up Newell's vision for Steam this way: "It's an MMO." It's not just a library and a shopping cart; Steam is a whole ecosystem of mechanics, rewards, and feeds designed to make discovering, buying, and playing games feel good on its own. "There's all of these elements that let you express who you are as a person as a person as well as MMO-ing the entire experience," he says. "Players aren't just consuming, they're also expressing themselves but in very passive ways," he adds.
With Epic, "I still don't understand their North Star," he continues. "Because their store always feels sterile to me." Faliszek agrees that Valve could do more to improve Steam, like finding better ways to "monitor and control some of what's happening there" in places like comments or forums, but says the platform is still far ahead of Epic's.
"Monitor your downloads, find games faster, customize your experience, everything about your game in one view," he says, reading off of Epic's post, "but it's nothing about community. It's nothing about that. Maybe they've decided that that's not the avenue that they can pursue because they don't have the number of people there and they don't have that as their North Star. But I'm just confused by what the launcher is supposed to be and why I'm supposed to be excited about it. Because saying it loads faster when it doesn't have all the features isn't a real flex."
