"We vibe coded a new Epic Games Launcher" because "programming is hard", announce company we're somehow supposed to see as a serious Steam competitor

Days after a report emerged about them imposing an "AI-first" production model on the devs of a new Disney shooter, Epic Games have released a new version of their launcher in preview form. It's been "vibe coded" with aim of making it "faster than the other guy". That other guy is Steam, something the yacht gag in the second paragraph of the announcement post makes even more obvious.

"Programming is hard," reads Epic's official announcement post about this new launcher being available to preview. "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. This first release is light on features. Think of it as a speedboat and not a yacht! Though it does have advanced digital commerce technology such as a shopping cart."

No, seriously, that's what they wrote. The social posts about it are similarly toned. Nothing much in the way of specifics in terms of how exactly genAI vibe coding was used to put together the new launcher appear to have been offered. Suffice it to say that just injecting some slop seems unlikely to be some lone magic key to making a launch that's faster than others.

The new launcher - which is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux - is being touted as having speedy load times and putting "less load on your system while it runs in the background". It's supposed to make finding games and info about them less of a faff, as well as offering customisation so you can stick what you want where you want it.

"It's been rebuilt entirely from the ground up," Epic Games Store general manager Martin Keely added in an interview with IGN. "So this is a completely new tech stack, a complete new rewrite of both the shell, which has the download manager, library, and the app itself, as well as the new store architecture. So features like discover and product detail pages, those have all been rewritten."

The use of vibe coding at Epic's hardly a surprise. CEO Tim Sweeney, overseer of a company which fired over 1000 staff earlier this year, declared that Epic are attempting to achieve "maximum AI acceleration" this week. He subsequently thanked what appears to be an AI bot Twitter account roleplaying as a duck for agreeing with him that this AI push is the right way to go.

As you do.