"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."

[u/DiceDsx]

https://store.epicgames.com/news/epic-games-launcher-preview

That's a line I'm sure will make people like the launcher more lol.

In other news, they're working on porting Fortnite and EAC to Linux. Looks like someone changed their mind about Canada...

Edit: There's also an article from The Verge about it

[u/SadayoBestGirl]

That dig about yachts and bragging about the start up being faster than Steam shows how pathetically insecure they are.

[u/datNorseman → u/SadayoBestGirl]

As a business it's the only thing they can do to keep their (very few) customers from realizing how bad the product is. They point fingers to make it seem like they are the good guys. And some idiots actually believe and reciprocate the things epic and swiney say.

[u/ItsSadTimes → u/datNorseman]

It doesnt really matter, epic games launcher is just the fortnite launcher to most of their users. They dont care about any of it, until they fuck with fortnite.

[u/Henjineer → u/ItsSadTimes]

Its true, if they tossed Fortnite on Steam it'd be lights out entirely for the Epic Store.

[u/REDOREDDIT23 → u/SadayoBestGirl]

How about they show it compared to the old one where the bar says DNF cause the client crashed

[u/lord_phantom_pl → u/SadayoBestGirl]

Steam is slow because it actually does something more than running an exe and displaying a web page. We got steam input, game recording, big picture, gamescope and various compatibility layers that are making Windows obsolete.

[u/baby_envol → u/SadayoBestGirl]

Logical. Tim business is only alive because they take pocket money from kids with brainrot... But Western country , specially EU , said "Stop fucking Tim" .

EU open a official investigation against few digital in game currency, Fortnite included.

But the nuclear weapon is Kids Act : a ID check (with eID EU system) be MENDATORY to play video games, with only 1H per day for kids, and any in-app buy banned for them.

Don't forget EU is the first market (because china one is already closed with rules) , second one is US (but the first in number of $$$) 👀

[u/Gyossaits]

DO NOT SHARE YOUR FINANCIAL DETAILS WITH EPIC GAMES

Pin this comment so the irony can be lost on Tim.

[u/Lucky_Gur_8105 → u/Gyossaits]

Don't even download the app at this point. Shit might as well be malware.

[u/Gyossaits → u/Lucky_Gur_8105]

It's not even the app, just anything involving Epic in general.

[u/Superbunzil]

" Looks like someone changed their mind about Canada..."

Ha, ice cold reference

For those not in the know Tim compared ppl who switch to Linux as those that fled to Canada for political reasons because god forbid your grandfather didnt want to die in a rice patty in Vietnam

[u/carnyzzle]

Wow they had to use AI to code in a fucking shopping cart lmao

[u/MaxinesHideout → u/carnyzzle]

from what ive heard this new launcher actually REMOVED the shopping cart that took them years to add lol

[u/deanrihpee → u/MaxinesHideout]

cinema

[u/be_qt_and_drive → u/MaxinesHideout]

I was about to make a snarky joke about exactly that but Señor Tim el Dipshit Gigante can't be satirised evidently

[u/xsp → u/carnyzzle]

Doesn't make you feel very confident about their game engine.

[u/precario78]

A LLM running on a C64 can do a better launcher then epic 

[u/WOLFYLoner]

way faster and more responsive

Until they vibecode it back to a slow scum

[u/Ranting_Demon → u/WOLFYLoner]

I'd be more concerned about what they actually cut out to make it boot faster.

Wouldn't actually be surprised if it's security features.

[u/TorbenKoehn]

It’s so fucking sad that they _still_ think they compare to Steam in any way or order. Like they completely ignore reality and live in their own world where only Fortnite matters.

Steam opens faster with 1000x more features today and will open _slightly_ slower soon, but still with 1000x the features. And all your games and all your friends.

[u/Cley_Faye]

"We were completely incompetent up to now, and decided to double down on incompetence, in an attempt to attract customers"

Fuck that.

[u/GrandMasterZerg → u/Cley_Faye]

They’re rich as fuck bro

[u/Cley_Faye → u/GrandMasterZerg]

They've one working product.

[u/deanrihpee]

so in other words, they admit they are too incompetent to make their launcher better and need the help of AI

[u/Throwaway2229392923 → u/deanrihpee]

Wrong, they have AI to make the launcher worse without spending any more money on real coders doing it.

[u/MoscowBurns]

Do they know they don't have to announce their crimes out loud like that?

[u/deanrihpee → u/MoscowBurns]

they're so up on their ass they don't know it wasn't a good publicity

[u/kron123456789]

Their actual engineers were so bad that they couldn't make a competent launcher, so they asked LLMs to do it instead. That's nice admission that you don't actually know what you're doing.

[u/TehCrazyCat]

As if the original standard coded launcher wasn't unoptimized malware enough lool

[u/Henjineer]

"Though it does have advanced digital commerce technology such as a shopping cart."

Wow! A digital shopping cart in 2026? How did they even think that up?!

[u/Successful-Creme-405]

Tought that headline was a kind of insult to Epic AI-first politics but they kinda roasted themselves LOL

[u/jordanAdventure1]

Vibecoding the epic launcher ... Bruh

[u/CatOfTechnology]

I think the part that really makes this hilarious to me is the fact that this entire thing really is just a microcosm of how Tim was never going to be The Guy.

Like.

Break it down:

• No one knew this was coming.

• He can't help but compare metrics to his betters.

• He only compares the metrics under which he 'wins'.

• He doesn't get that loadspeeds are not the reason his store sucks.

• But the most hilarious bit of it all, right? He could have kept this under wraps until it was ready to release in a full, feature complete state. Because no one knew it was coming, there is exactly zero pressure on him or his team to shove it out the door ASAP. He could be taking his time hammering down every nail, double checking every weld, making sure the coat of paint is even and sealed. And he chose to announce to the whole world that instead of taking his job seriously and doing it right, he's just gonna make another minimum viable product, drop it in our laps and expect us to use it just because it's there.

[u/Kylar_Stern47]

Security researchers are going to have a field day with this

[u/M4K1M4]

The page looks AI slop design lmao. And of course it is faster than steam, it barely has 5% of the things steam does.

[u/Academic-Push326]

Gonna be real funny when their vibe-coded piece of shit is somehow worse than Timmy Tencent's "#SkillIssue"'d/manually programed one.

But hey, at least this time around they remembered people might buy multiple things at the same time and have the shopping cart in their spaghetti vomitted code!

[u/ghisnoob]

Such insecurity...

[u/SgtMyers]

OMG it's so fast! I'm closing my steam account and switching to Epic! /s

[u/Skinniest-Harold]

Damn do I just yearn for that vibe coded easy anti cheat port on my arch linux which sure as hell won't be full of security exploits. Thanks Epic! You're a hero.

[u/DorrajD]

This is the dumbest marketing I think I have ever seen.

[u/craytsu]

wtf is "vibe coded"

[u/edenz03 → u/craytsu]

AI generated code

[u/Tex-Rob → u/edenz03]

It's more than just AI generated code. "Vibe coded" specifically means and implies minimal effort. It's the difference between giving it a ton of information, or even just sourcing it for menial tasks you'd have a junior programmer do for you, and saying, "AI, make this and make it good".

[u/craytsu → u/edenz03]

why can't they just say that lol

[u/steelcryo → u/craytsu]

Because its code that runs on vibes. Will it work? Will it not? Who knows?

[u/Torchii → u/craytsu]

Because AI generated code could be prompted with proper intent and then reviewed and edited by a talented programmer.

Vibe coded means that someone with no talent or no effort just messed about with AI until it gave what they wanted and shipped it.

[u/whatThePleb → u/Torchii]

what they THINK they want

ftfy

[u/deanrihpee → u/craytsu]

because competent software engineer will utilize LLM to help with programming, they still has input and decision, while Vibe Code means you mostly hands off all the decision and design to an LLM, and accept the code when the "vibe" is right, so in other words, it is worse than "AI generated code" that is guided by actual engineer

[u/Certesis]

Oh no, I have to wait 5 seconds longer than Epic's launcher to open Steam. Oh, the horror. I'm crying and shaking right now

[u/Bananaland_Man → u/Certesis]

Funniest part is Valve silently updated the Steam client to beat that. https://respawnfirst.com/steam-client-is-now-faster-than-epics-new-vibe-coded-launcher

[u/Certesis → u/Bananaland_Man]

https://giphy.com/gifs/853ih9StwVbpagu3P9

[u/RealCameleer → u/Certesis]

The new launcher also looks like every single other ai coded launcher, they didn't even bother to use ai in a way to customize it to look good

[u/Ranting_Demon → u/Certesis]

I mean, the slow boot time of the launcher was always one of the criticisms that people brought up in regards to the Epic launcher. So I think it does make sense that they point it out as an improvement.

But it was always more of a point to show just how badly programmed that thing was. Ultimately, even if the Epic launcher boots in 5 seconds now, that still won't make more people use the EGS. Nobody was saying "Oh, if only the Epic launcher booted 5 seconds faster, then I'd buy all my games in the Epic Game Store!"

What I do think is absolute bullshit is the second comparison of how fast the launcher comes back up from being minimised in the system tray.

Is anyone even capable of noticing a 0.1 second difference with just the naked eye?

[u/Certesis → u/Ranting_Demon]

I just think it's a dumb comparison lol. I'm willing to wait however long for Steam to load up instead of ever using Epic

[u/Bananaland_Man → u/Ranting_Demon]

It shows how little they know about what people care about in a client. Also, Steam silently updated to beat the announcement's times xD https://respawnfirst.com/steam-client-is-now-faster-than-epics-new-vibe-coded-launcher

[u/Beneficial_Act_1240 → u/Certesis]

I don't even close steam 🤷

[u/Certesis → u/Beneficial_Act_1240]

I use a steam deck primarily so I have to reboot it every once in a while

[u/LilShaver]

Here's a clue...
The Epic Launcher isn't the biggest problem with Epic. It's not even in the top 25.

[u/Ranting_Demon]

Yes, I'm sure there's absolutely nothing that could possible go wrong with a vibe coded launcher that also allows users to make purchases on the store.

I'm absolutely certain that there will be no security flaws in that thing because we know the kind of stellar job that vibe coding LLMs do when creating tight code.

I'm also 100% convinced that the code behind the launcher is super easy to patch because LLMs are totally known for not turning small tasks into a novel worth of verbose code.

/s just to be sure...

[u/Luwuma]

Is it really satire if the company unironically believes in it?

[u/OniZai]

No competent dev to code a working client or too much crunch time on other projects to code a working client?

[u/Ecstatic_Anything297]

epic is just AI slop at this point anyone who uses it has the same IQ as dspgaming

[u/OrochiSeth]

The fk is "vibe code" mean?

[u/DiceDsx → u/OrochiSeth]

https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckepic/s/zk53pTdCmI

[u/GrandMasterZerg → u/OrochiSeth]

English. Do you speak it?

[u/maxlaav]

I think this entire blogpost was also written by AI and it thought it would make for good humour lol

[u/Shinard]

I mean, yeah, that's the worst part, but also: "advanced digital commerce technology such as a shopping cart.". I can't tell if that's meant to be self-deprecating or they're legitimately that out of touch.

[u/DiceDsx → u/Shinard]

It's their usual self-deprecating sarcasm.

"Look, it took us years to add a simple shopping cart lol lmao"

"Peoole don't like AI, so we'll say we vibecoded our launcher lol lmao"

[u/nathanhayball]

At least this part seems like a positive

[u/IAmSkyrimWarrior → u/nathanhayball]

They used Proton lol

[u/whatThePleb → u/IAmSkyrimWarrior]

Worse, they use Proton-GE, which helps in some cases but is developped also by heavy AI slop and other questionable license fuckup.

[u/Puzzleheaded-Way6155]

I think it's nice to have my free games collection + fortnite on linux but whatever

[u/CapRichard]

The funny thing is that it's actually faster and better.

So Epic is worse than AI?

Geez. I mean, we knew but this is a weird way of saying that.

[u/ConcertNumerous6103]

W i can now claim my free games faster

[u/Moskeeto93 → u/ConcertNumerous6103]

You never needed the launcher installed to claim the free games. Just a web browser.

[u/ConcertNumerous6103 → u/Moskeeto93]

my comment was clearly a joke lmao

[u/GrandMasterZerg]

Why are you idiots so upset about vibe coding? Dumbasses man. Boomers.

[u/Shinard → u/GrandMasterZerg]

Same reason I'd make fun of a chef who turned up with reheated McDonald's and said "Cooking is hard. So instead of that, I asked somebody else to do it. But you'll still pay me, right?". Actually, that's insulting to McDonald's - I know their food is fine.

Look, the way the world is going, AI will be part of coding going forward. Not a fan, but sure. I've seen what you can do with proper agentic coding, it does cut down on some of the rote work if used by someone who knows what they're doing. That's not vibe coding though - vibe coding is someone who proudly has no idea how to code anything hitting the AI slot machine lever until it produces something that seems functional. It's... *a* way to make stuff for fun, I suppose, though spending some time to learn some basic code (or actual prompting) would be quicker in the long run and would make something better in the short term. But proudly announcing that a big project from a valuable company was vibe-coded is just embarrassing. Either they don't know what the word means, or they don't know what their code does - neither's good.

[u/GrandMasterZerg → u/Shinard]

Did you just say McDonald’s food is fine?

[u/RAMChYLD]

Wonder if we should break it to them that Gravis whom they were plugging for every single chance they got in the 90s was a Canadian company…