Nearly eight years after Epic took on Steam with its own Game Store and launcher, the Fortnite maker is deploying a new tool to give it an edge over Valve: vibe coding.
In announcing the new publicly available « Preview » build of its Epic Games Launcher, Epic writes 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. » And while that might sound a little tongue-in-cheek, Epic Games Store General Manager and VP Martin Keely told PC Gamer that the team « started from scratch » and used AI as « a tool to write and review new features and new capabilities from the ground up in a different tech stack than what we had previously. » The goal, Keely said, was to « look at functionality that existed [in the current Epic Games Launcher] and [say] we want to replicate that, but not the code itself. »
Speaking to IGN, Keely clarified that using AI to code the new Launcher « made us more efficient and allowed a small team to rewrite the code base and be able to launch it faster across platforms, support Windows and Mac, and we’re going to have a Linux version as well. »
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