Epic Games 用生成式 AI 推出新 Epic Games Store 应用公测

Epic Games has launched a whole new app for the Epic Games Store into public testing, boasting about how they’ve used generative AI vibecoding to do so, because “Programming is hard.”

Yes, they literally said that. In the announcement post. Right in the first paragraph.

Programming a web store to compete with Steam is apparently too difficult for one of the most fundamental game companies around.

This is effectively a brand new beginning for the Epic Games Launcher app on Windows, Linux and Mac, and the company notes that it is “light on features” at this stage, though it does now have “advanced digital commerce technology such as a shopping cart,” and does still have friends, party and voice chat support for the company’s cross-platform networking.

Epic does boast about how much faster the new app is compared to Steam, launching in 5.47 seconds compared to Steam’s 10.07 seconds. Steam, of course, is not light on features, has built-in forums and game communities, modding support and distribution, and more.

Look, it’s good that Epic is launching a new EGS app on computers, because the current one has been stagnant almost since its original release – heck, they admitted that it “sucks” earlier this year and promised more features and improved speed – but I don’t think that leaning in on AI vibecoding this hard is really going to turn public perceptions. It’s also just a bad look that Valve is just a few hundred employees to Epic’s few thousand, and the latter hasn’t closed the gap in the better part of a decade.

Then again, Epic laid off around 1,000 employees earlier this year, as engagement levels with Fortnite slid, and that could also be a reason why the company is putting so much more emphasis on using gen-AI, integrating it deeply into its game engine and with reports that their Marvel and Star Wars shooter is now an AI-first development.

Source: Epic