Epic rebuilds launcher with AI

Nearly eight years after launching its Game Store, Epic Games has released a preview build of a new Epic Games Launcher built using what it calls vibe coding, a term for AI-assisted development.

“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.”

AI helped rewrite the codebase

Epic Games Store General Manager Martin Keely told PC Gamer the team started from scratch and used AI as a tool to write and review features in a different tech stack, replicating functionality without copying…

“started from scratch”

Small team, faster launch

Keely told IGN that using AI made the team more efficient, allowing a small group to rewrite the codebase and launch faster across Windows, Mac, and a planned Linux version.

“made us more efficient and allowed a small team to rewrite the code base and be able to launch it faster across platforms”

Faster startup than Steam

Epic claims the new launcher starts from cold boot to the store page faster than Steam.

“we vibe coded the Epic Games Launcher to be faster than the other guy”

Preview has bugs and missing features

Epic warns the launcher preview will have bugs and is light on features, with certain social features and account management options not yet ported from the legacy version.

Epic pivots to AI-first development

The launcher release follows Epic CEO Tim Sweeney's announcement that the company is undergoing a huge pivot to an AI-first development model, moving developers to enable teams to build more and better stuff across all…

“We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic, moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration”