- Epic is kicking off an 'AI MegaJam' next month
- It's a four-day competition for developers to build a game with AI, giving away $50,000 worth of prizes
- Coming on top of Epic's recent push of AI in its preview launcher and elsewhere, this has provoked quite the negative reaction from gamers
Epic has announced an 'AI MegaJam' in which you can 'vibe your way to $50K,' a neat little rhyme there, but gamers are predictably bewildered by the idea of this event which rewards game developers using AI.
The MegaJam is a four-day competition that starts on November 12, whereby teams of up to five people can use unlimited AI agents to create a playable game in either Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN).
You can compete and code from anywhere, although there will be teams taking part locally (for two days) in San Francisco at Digital Jungle, where Epic promises "teams from Anthropic, Google, Meshy, OpenAI, SpaceXSI" and other big-name AI brands (expect daily livestreams, too).
Epic tells us: "Bring any AI tools into your workflow, from asset generation to coding agents. Get creative! Prototype the mechanic you never had time for, or try the art style you weren't sure you could pull off."
The prize pool is $50,000, which is split up into a bunch of categories. The main prizes are for the best Unreal Engine and UEFN games, which will net $7,500 respectively, with second and third places winning $5,000 and $2,500 in those categories too.
The best student project for either UE or UEFN will also receive $7,500, with the same runner-up prizes of $5,000 and $2,500.
The best team overall will bag a further $5,000, meaning the maximum prize here will be $12,500 (as presumably they must be one of the main category winners). There are a bunch of other modifier prizes, mind you, as extras on top, including best mobile game or solo developer ($2,500 apiece).
Epic also notes that: "Standout Unreal Engine and UEFN entries can earn development continuation grants of up to $50,000 to keep building after the jam."
Analysis: negative vibes
As you might imagine, there's been an immediate and strong negative reaction from gamers. There are multiple observations that Steam is already full of 'AI slop' games, with gamers asking why on earth Epic is encouraging this.
The irony of Epic proclaiming that the invited vibe-coders should "get creative!" isn't lost, either, given that most gamers view AI as the grim reaper for creativity, wielding its pixelated scythe as it kills and extracts the souls of games.
As one Redditor laments: "We're being bombarded with thousands of AI slop games because 'with AI, anyone can make their dreams a reality and become a game dev!' The game market is going to collapse, as seen in the latest Steam Next Fest, all thanks to AI bros and AI billionaires. Oh, how I hate Tim Sweeney."
In short, there's a lot of venting and vexation out there, so does this feel tone deaf from Epic? Very much so, but you wouldn't expect anything else really given CEO Tim Sweeney's recent (and past) comments on the subject of AI in gaming, and what's been going on at Epic lately.
Witness Sweeney's proclamation earlier this month that a "huge pivot" is happening at Epic where it's "moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration," with the chief exec arguing that AI can be "empowering for creators" and not the death of gaming. And of course there's also the new Epic launcher in preview, which took a tongue-in-cheek approach with a release announcement that declared: "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."
All of which went down swimmingly well with most PC gamers, of course.
Interestingly, the idea for this AI MegaJam may have originated in this discussion on X, where SYD Games Studio suggests such a developer competition. Sweeney replies that it's an "interesting idea" and appears to have taken that ball and run with it (he also observes that AI represents "truly a new age of gaming and software ahead").
I get that AI can be a useful tool when employed by game developers to save some time doing coding grunt work (with the appropriate careful checks in place), but extending vibe-coding more broadly to embrace the entire game-making process is just asking for trouble and heaping on the bad feelings towards Epic here. At this point, Epic seems to be almost trolling gamers, and coding aside, the general vibes are getting distinctly nasty.