Credit: Epic Games
“Programming is hard. So, instead of doing that, we vibe coded a new Epic Games Launcher.”
Epic Games opened its launcher announcement with those lines on 14 October. Epic says the rebuilt app is faster than the old one and has a new look. It is out in Preview for Windows, macOS and, for the first time, Linux.
Vibe coding usually means building software mostly through prompts to AI models, with little code written by hand.
The announcement came two days after Jason Schreier reported for Bloomberg that Epic had delayed its Disney game. Epic also told that team to go “AI first”, Bloomberg reported. Chief executive Tim Sweeney then said the company was in the middle of a “huge pivot” towards AI.
‘No more hand-written code’
The game is an unannounced shooter with Marvel and Star Wars characters. Disney invested $1.5bn in Epic in 2024, and the two agreed a multi-game partnership that was set to start with this shooter. It had been due in March 2027. Epic has now pushed it back without a new date, according to people familiar with the project.
Epic told the developers to use tools such as Anthropic’s Claude, with humans managing and guiding the work. “No more hand-written code,” one of the game’s directors told staff in an internal message that Bloomberg reviewed. The director added that all art for the game would be “generated with full AI workflows”.
Some developers were stunned when Epic announced the change on a video call, the people told Bloomberg. Some joked about whether they should ask Claude to fix its own mistakes. Others argued it would not work as well as Epic hoped. Progress on the game had already been slower than expected, the people said, because Epic underestimated the staff and time it needed.
‘A huge pivot’
Jake Jones, Epic’s communications director, gave Bloomberg a statement. Disney did not immediately respond to Bloomberg.
“We’re embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers who are the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do,” Jones said.
Sweeney posted on X shortly after the report.
“We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic, moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration. The aim isn’t to do the same stuff with fewer people,” Sweeney wrote.
He added that the goal is to let everyone at Epic build “MORE and BETTER stuff”.
In March, Epic laid off more than 1,000 employees. Sweeney blamed a fall in Fortnite engagement. In a note to staff, he wrote that “the layoffs aren’t related to AI”. Epic is also building Claude and Gemini into Unreal Engine 6.
A launcher built ‘from scratch’
Martin Keely, general manager of the Epic Games Store, told PC Gamer the team used AI to write new code. It did not reuse the old app’s code.
“We started from scratch. This is a completely new architecture for both the store and the launcher shell,” Keely said.
Epic says the new launcher starts in 5.47 seconds, against 10.07 seconds for Steam. Keywords Studios ran those tests for Epic in October. It averaged results across 13 machines, leaving out the three lowest-end machines it tested. Ars Technica found in its own tests that the launcher reaches the store a few seconds faster than Steam.
Epic calls this first release “a speedboat and not a yacht”. The Preview still lacks some social features and account options from the old launcher. It does not support Intel Macs.
Not everyone liked the pitch. On Bluesky, Chris Franklin called the opening line “absolutely jawdropping” from a company “once renowned for their engine prowess”. Sweeney joked on X, in a reply to a Fortnite on Linux account: “we vibecoded linux support”.
Fortnite is coming to Linux
The bigger news for Linux players is Fortnite. Epic is rebuilding its Easy Anti-Cheat software as EAC Linux v2, and will test it in Fortnite first.
The new version does not use a kernel driver. It checks for a signed kernel, Secure Boot, TPM 2.0, measured boot and other security features already in Linux. It only runs while a protected game is open. Epic says it is talking to distribution maintainers, and to Valve about Steam Hardware devices. The Steam Deck does not support the required features yet.
Epic has given no date. Engineering director Rick Deist told The Verge there is no timeline for the Linux version of Fortnite.
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