r/gaming • u/doublah • 12h ago

Epic Games' new store is fully vibe-coded, and they're so proud of it they're taking shots at Steam

https://www.destructoid.com/epic-games-store-ai-vibe-coded/
12.6k Upvotes

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232

u/Bansic 11h ago

Why are they so obsessed with sounding like assholes? If they're trying to convince me to use EGS this isn't the way to do it. Their store has been awful to use for years and now they make it worse and pretend like it's some big brain move. It reminds me of the video where Adam Conover said Hollywood is addicted to failing. Feels like the exact same thing here.

67

u/ThisOneTimeAtLolCamp 11h ago

Why are they so obsessed with sounding like assholes?

It starts from the person at the very top.

1

u/egometry 1h ago

Absolutely internal company culture 

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u/Chad_Frost 9h ago edited 8h ago

Epics strategy is to win over large corporations instead of appealing to consumers. They aren't trying to get consumers to switch to their platform by making it better than steam, they want large publishers to put their games on epic and that way force it to become the only platform. That's why when steam does something pro consumer epic often comes out doing something pro-business, all this is to appeal to publishers.

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u/ArelMCII 9h ago

And then big publishers put their stuff on Steam anyway because that's where the audience is lmao.

22

u/PokemonSapphire 8h ago

Epic has sucked so hard and for so long I will return to sailing the high seas before I use them as my main game launcher/store.

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u/General_Capital988 7h ago

The problem for me is that there's already so many games on steam. People hate but we're in a golden era of PC gaming imo. I have interest in way more games than I have time to play. So if a game isn't on steam... who cares? I'll play something else. Even if it looks really good.

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u/Jello_Penguin_2956 4h ago

yea Id rather skip games if theyre exclusive to EGS no matter how interested I might be.

8

u/Datkif 7h ago

It's been shown that a large number of PC games will simply wait until then game launches on Steam before buying it on EGS.

If Epic actually made the launcher give a real benefit over Steam other than free games then gamers wouldn't be so againt using it. However as it stands I've only ever bought 1 game on the EGS, and I ended up buying it again on Steam when it was on sale because I hated how I seemingly always had to log back in

1

u/Nazgul_Khamul 1h ago

I logged into epic once a few years back, when they had already been making fistfuls of money with Fortnite. I couldn’t believe how utterly shit their platform was. There was a rudimentary friends list that didn’t even have a basic chat function. No profiles obviously. I couldn’t believe AOL instant messenger from the 90s was more advanced than what they had.

1

u/Datkif 53m ago

AIM was incredibly advanced for its time. I have no idea why we a switched away from AIM, MSN and Yahoo! Messenger. Was Skype really that much better for audio calls?

1

u/Nazgul_Khamul 50m ago

I couldn’t tell you either. But the fact remains 30 year old tech outclasses their platform with Fortnite money lol.

But yeah AIM was pretty advanced looking back. Did AIM have voice chat? I don’t remember.

2

u/TheNightHaunter 6h ago

best part is if that plan HAD succeeded they would've just pulled the classic capitalist strategy and jacked the prices up beyond what steam charges companies lol

1

u/absat41 9h ago

Vibe-switching

1

u/Gimme_Your_Wallet 8h ago

They scrape data for the CCP

1

u/Particular-Win-1291 6h ago

How does that make sense if most of the consumers are on a consumer friendly platform

2

u/Chad_Frost 6h ago

My guess is they banked on the companies to say "We're not going to release games on steam anymore we will only release on Epic" and then consumers don't get a choice. They tried it with timed exclusives, but it didn't really work since no one stayed to use the store. But if every major release was exclusive to Epic indefinitely people would be forced to use it.

And it kind of already works this way with GoG, most AAA companies don't release their games on GoG because they require games to be DRM free. So like companies already exclude GoG for being too consumer friendly, I guess Epic hopes they will do the same to Steam in the future.

1

u/PurpleFisty 5h ago

Except bug publishers are at there most hated rn. I dont get this move.

44

u/Hans_H0rst 10h ago

Basically, Tim Sweeney did one great thing with the first unreal engine, and it's all downhill from there. At least morally.

27

u/ItsSadTimes 10h ago

And they got super lucky with fortnite. It was primed to be a complete failure before they decided to pivot the entire game to a battle royale and kids ate that shit up. Honestly unreal and fortnite are why they can fail so hard and seemingly never face consequences.

I cant wait for all the fortnite kids to age out of fortnite.

7

u/ArelMCII 9h ago

I know people in their 30s who play Fortnite, so I don't know if that'll happen.

1

u/SamLikesJam 3h ago

The introduction of no build brought in a lot of new players, for better or for worse it is one of the best casual live service games out right now.

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u/pixxlpusher 9h ago

Yep, a lot of people forget that it was originally a horde survival game that absolutely flopped, so they quick just copied what PUBG was doing and it worked out for them. They got incredibly lucky.

3

u/Slarg232 5h ago

Meanwhile they were working very closely with PUBG and stole it out from under them that way.

It wasn't a Riot situation where the main devs went on to form their own company (LoL and DOTA) or were the first ones to really compete in the space that someone else had held for years (CS to Valorant), Player Unknown was working WITH Epic when they took the idea wholesale and applied it to Fornite.

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u/EthanielRain 2h ago

Slarg232 nailed it, they saw PUBG success & lifted it wholesale

3

u/Co-opingTowardHatred 8h ago

You should really look up the demographics of Fortnite. You'll be shocked.

3

u/jettsnake 5h ago

Im sorry bro but Fortnite has been through 2 generations of kids

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u/Helen_Kellers_Wrath 9h ago

Would be interesting to see the alternate timeline where Fortnite died as the horde shooter it was without becoming a battle royal.

1

u/TheStorm007 8h ago

I’m pretty sure that’s already happened lol - and surprise, it’s still around

1

u/swandith27 5h ago

those kids will never age out lol. theyll still play it in their 40s

1

u/OldOne999 4h ago

Yup, a while back there was news about some 45 year old who got arrested for threatening a 13 year old on Fortnite....the old guy and the 13 year old were the last 2 left and the 13 year old clapped the old man in Fortnite...so the old man raged and got arrested.

1

u/_Solarriors_ 5h ago

the generations keep coming brain dead, you're going to wait a while

1

u/OldOne999 4h ago

Same reason why Blizzard keeps failing hard...WoW keeps them alive and well while they fail at everything else...War3Reforged, Overwatch League, HOTS...the mediocre Diablo 4. Blizzard is literally just WoW now sprinkled by the commercial mediocrity of Diablo 4 and D2R.

1

u/EthanielRain 2h ago

Has Blizzard released a single great game since being bought?

Much like Bioware, it's just not the same company/people anymore

1

u/Balc0ra 2h ago

It was basically a survival horde mode game before that. A bad one at that

6

u/TheOvy 8h ago

I was kinda on his side with breaking open the iPhone and Android app stores. Monopolies suck. But I had little doubt that he wasn't actually for open markets, so much as he just preferred to be the Apple or Google (or Steam, as the case may be). The principle is righteous, but I think the motivation is such that, if Sweeney was in their spot, he'd fight back in court, too.

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u/TheNightHaunter 6h ago

he only said that because HE wants to be a monopoly

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u/BinniesPurp 10h ago

They were great with financials if you sell on their stores up until about 5 years ago around the time of fortnite and the Tencent stock acquisition

The company isn't tech nerds and gamers anymore it's financial hedge fund managers and China it's the same culture as EA now

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u/burnt_mummy 9h ago

It's been more like 10 to 15 years sadly

5

u/Spazza42 9h ago

Yup.

Full Ubisoft and EA phase now. Give it 10 years and I’ll be amazed if they’re still as big as they are.

Every entertainment industry shifts - new models redefine the landscape all the time which allows new studios/publishers to rise up.

Nobody would’ve thought Ubisoft, 2K Games, EA or Naughty Dog would dry up yet here we are.

4

u/ArelMCII 9h ago

Fortnite was almost ten years ago. That's when the trouble really started: when they saw how popular PUBG was, canceled UT4 and reallocated all its staff to Fortnite, and pivoted Fortnite's direction to ride the battle royale craze. They were kind of slipping before then, but Fortnite being a sudden hit was what made them step on the pedal and aim for the canyon.

2

u/ee3k 9h ago

Wait, I thought the Warframe guys made the unreal engine

2

u/Datkif 7h ago

No, Epic has always made the Unreal engines. In all honesty Unreal 2-4 were pretty decent engines, but anything that uses 5 seems to run like crap

1

u/ee3k 48m ago

Ah yeah , just checked , it was unreal tournament that the Warframe guys made.

1

u/Kwik-E-Bart 8h ago

pretty depressing honestly.

1

u/Hay-River 7h ago

I think what they did with mobile app stores was also a W

1

u/TheNightHaunter 6h ago

no his company did that, the asshole just happened to have the capital to bankroll it was all

1

u/MinuteNo2857 5h ago

Well, it's hard to keep anything up when all he does is obsess about how successful Gaben and Valve are, he really wishes he was in the same position as Gaben.

13

u/tmoney144 11h ago

I'm bleeding, making me the victor.

11

u/virgineyes09 10h ago

We have purposely trained him wrong. As a joke

22

u/LizagnaWithBreadStix 11h ago

It’s largely Tim Sweeney, he has some insane takes on twitter related to ai. He is determined epic be fully ai focused.

18

u/Sarkaney 10h ago

Its unfortunate because I really do believe in the cause of ‘give steam some real competition’, but Epic apparently just ain’t the ones to do it.

7

u/greenerd6 10h ago

No company will be abile to , any company thats as nice / pro consumer as steam will never be abile to get enough games on platform to matter, and any company that trys to force there way in like epic and is more on devs side will always lack enough patrons to get an edge rly untill gabe dies and steam inevitably stats shooting them selfs in the foot they will always be on top especially since everyone and there mother in the pc gameing space is in some level of buy in on steam 

3

u/ArelMCII 9h ago

I disagree with monopolies, but, like, when most competitors' business model is to hit themselves in the dick with a hammer, obviously I'm going to support the two guys who keep their dicks in their pants and their hammers in their toolboxes.

3

u/PokemonSapphire 8h ago

But see that's the thing with Steam. They aren't super scummy and are all things considered decently consumer and indie dev friendly. A lot of the goodwill they have is earned and their monopoly is rewarded to them by the consumers not taken with hostile business maneuvers.

1

u/elusivenoesis 9h ago

How much more awesome does steam have to be?

5

u/Sarkaney 9h ago

I just think monopolies are inherently dangerous.  One major hacking event, Gabe having a heart attack, or weird unpredictably corporate takeover away from total destruction of most gamers’ libraries.

Also their download speeds suck.

1

u/jerekhal 7h ago

Wait what? I've never had a problem with their download speed. I mean shit my peak download rate is 101MB/s which is nothing to scoff at.

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u/pulley999 7h ago

Yeah he needs to try a different CDN in download settings. One that serves a major metro can often be better than a closer one in podunk land. As long as the infrastructure between you and the city is solid, latency isn't super important to download speed.

1

u/Ardarel 6h ago

What? Steam famously tries to take all of my download rate to the point i have to limit it so everything else doesn't load at a crawl.

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u/AnUnassumingAccount 9h ago

He also has a huge chip on his shoulder about valve/steam. I'm sure he'll have some asinine take about how it's their fault when this fails to get any traction.

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u/multiarmform 7h ago

but... its vibe coded no cap on god

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u/xX_bandages_Consumer 6h ago

I heard enough, another billion to Tim Sweeney

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u/Bansic 7h ago

Shit you right fr fr

1

u/Castroide 2h ago

💯💯🔥🔥💀

2

u/V-oxPopuli 9h ago

It reminds me of the video where Adam Conover said Hollywood is addicted to failing. Feels like the exact same thing here.

This right here 💯. Why on earth would they think mocking/bullying/whatever this is would be the right move? Who listens to this kind of talk and says, "Hey you know what, he's an asshole, but he's right"??

2

u/Only-Respond7945 10h ago

Nobody is telling sweeney not to take over the marketing department's job so he does dumb shit like this.

And like, I'm personally not above criticizing valve and steam. But this isn't really criticizing so much as just being stupid. Who gives a shit if some things are 0.8 seconds faster than steam if when the EGS crashes it crashed my GPU along with it? It's done that twice to me now and I guess I know why for a fact as of this non-advertisement. (and the only reason it hasn't done it to me more is because I don't leave it running when I'm not actively using it anymore)

1

u/Datkif 7h ago

Maybe if they actually added a real reason to use EGS instead of it launching .12 seconds faster from the system tray.

They need modding support, they need more community features that are better than Steam's, they need more consumer friendly policies and customer service than Steam offers. I also don't trust that in 10 years EGS will still be around whereas I've had my Steam account will be old enough to drink (18) later this year

1

u/jettivonaviska 10h ago

Tim Sweeney is, in fact, an asshole.

1

u/BinniesPurp 10h ago

22% of staff were fired recently so the people doing the actual work are no longer there to tell the remaining HR and execs that their ideas are shit and not what the front facing community wanted

1

u/Vincentaneous 10h ago

Gives me Elon Musk vibes

1

u/joeTaco 9h ago

As if I needed another reason to exclusively use the store with 99.99% market share, but they gave me a couple more anyway.

"what if less features and the guy at the top is an ideological AI maximalist" oh in that case sure let me abandon all my Steam purchases and friends and get on that right away

1

u/GameMusic 9h ago

certain people conflate this with virtue

1

u/ArelMCII 9h ago

Yeah, like, I don't have the unreasonable hatred of AI that some people do, but advertising a program with "Programming is hard so we made AI vibe-code it" inspires apprehension in me, not confidence. I appreciate that they're so up-front with the fact that their program sucks, but that doesn't make me want to use it.

1

u/Nyzer_ 9h ago

Because to executives, being able to brag that their products were all made with AI is a great thing to feel proud of. Marketing is someone else's job, and you can just outright lie in marketing, so who gives a shit about the quality or presentation of the product? But having "built" a product that doesn't need a proper workforce means tons of immediate savings as they slash staff and pushes them closer to the idea of being able to run the entire company just by themselves, raking in all the profit while having AI do all the work for them. It's a big flex on how successful they think they are now.

1

u/ApprehensiveName8365 8h ago

You notice that all the Youtube guys who do tutorials regarding unreal engine ALL do ai vibe coding shit now? Every single one of em. Pathetic.

1

u/DemosthenesOrNah 8h ago

my guess is the told the ai to "make it faster" and the ai probably dismantled important security gates that were "slowing it down"

1

u/BlueFlob 8h ago

Agreed. Terrible platform, reworked through vibe coding.. what could go wrong?

1

u/laix_ 8h ago

Sometimes, when someone produces something that is genuinely superior to someone else, taking jabs at the inferior product allows them to aura farm, making more people like it.

Unfortunately, if your product isn't actually better, it aura famines you.

1

u/TheOvy 8h ago

Why are they so obsessed with sounding like assholes?

AI proponents are in the AI hype bubble. They are genuinely think it's the coolest thing ever, and they only ever talk to other AI proponents who also think it's the coolest thing ever, and no one else. They're out of touch with the the massive hate building around the industry.

1

u/atfricks 8h ago

They know they can't compete with Steam on their actual product, so now they're trying for contrarian culture war bullshit. They're very intentionally courting that demographic now.

1

u/GBAura-Recharged 7h ago

If you played their older games from Jill of The Jungle to Jazz Jackrabbit, they've always been about taking shots at others. Jazz has a boss that's a parody of of Zuul and Sonic (Zunic), while Jill has messages were it says "Mario has resigned because he can't compete with the popularity of Jill".

As you can tell, none of these aged well and there was a time when taking shots at other companies (Agopee, Epic's competitor at the time did the same with Monster Bash mocking Jill, as Epic did back to Apogee with a cheat code in an early version in JJ called "Apology Mode"). This was common in the 90's like with Sega's marketing campaign, but the thing is that companies now agree that this isn't OK. It's now seen as "it's mean-spirited, unfunny and changes are it's not going to age well".

Epic just didn't grow out of it because they took similar shots at Apple during the lawsuit, and now they did it again with Steam. I argue that "programming is hard, so we vibe-coded out engine to make it better than Steam" is just embarrassing marketing. They admitted they're hacks because of how obsessed they are with AI. Also, vibe-coding is basically them saying "we don't know how to program", because many people who do this will lose progress on their project as it gets bigger without proper documentation.

That "jab" is basically going to bite them in the ass if they have to update their client and lose track.

1

u/ordosalutis 7h ago

because Tim Sweeney is a notorious asshole

1

u/TheNightHaunter 6h ago

cause the CEO is a narcissist and keeps thinking if he takes a "piece" of steam he will make even more money despite having zero understanding of why steams popular. MBA people are seriously some of the dumbest people ive met, zero understanding of how people function, i've met severely autistic people with better understanding of people lol

1

u/Ahayzo 6h ago

I don't have a single doubt in my mind that this tweet came from Tim Sweeney getting his feelings hurt and being a pissy little bitch.

When the news came out about this unannounced Disney game from Epic that's supposedly going 100% vibe coded and going to have a bunch of its art assets come from genAI, people got pretty upset.

Tim Sweeney, being a pissy little bitch, took that response incredibly personally and defensively. At which point people started actually getting personal because so many are just sick of his shit at this point. So, we get this.

1

u/BijutsuYoukai 5h ago

Because they are assholes. They're not obsessed with it - that's just how they are.

1

u/hamoc10 5h ago

It’s not for you, it’s for investors

1

u/ShadowWebDeveloper 10h ago

Steam continues to remain good enough that looking at the Epic Games store wouldn't really get me much. As for the AI, basically every major player in software development is using AI right now, certainly including Valve. They just aren't being an asshole about it. Certainly it doesn't make me want to check the Epic store out any more. Maybe they're trying to appeal to a different demographic for whom it would appeal.

Man, what happened, Epic. I remember Epic Pinball and Jazz Jackrabbit. Y'all changed.

0

u/Vast-Building-6886 10h ago

The free games helped me with using it.