Tim Sweeney claims it’s a “Scarlet Letter” which makes players “try to kill the game”
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has criticised rival Valve for forcing studios to disclose when they use AI in game development.
Epic recently showed how it was integrating AI into Unreal Engine 6.
Time Sweeney said:
“If you want to launch a game, and get it as widely publicized as possible, you’ve got to put it on Steam so people can wish list it, and if you want to play it on Steam, then you have to get this Scarlet Letter of AI attached to your product, and now there is a hater community trying to kill the game.
“I think it’s really irresponsible of Valve. They shouldn’t do it, because it makes it much, much, much harder for a game developer to have a chance of success. You have to choose from either not using tools that can make you way more productive, and probably failing due to competition that does.”
Which is totally ignoring the factor that the user should know about the purchase it makes and be able to decide for themselves. Transparency for the player is not a bad thing.
Very “if we stopped testing for COVID there would be no cases” energy.
Sweeney’s not a fan of informed purchase practices. Good to know, Tim, I’ll make sure to not float any cash your way.
I’m not really surprised. That was clear when they started with the Epic Games Store without user reviews.
can we have two weeks without a shit take from Tim Sweeney ?
Unlikely.
Maybe if he goes into a coma or gets hit by a bus or something.
Timmy is just mad because his new game engine pressures devs to fill their games with AI slop, and Steam will force their developers to disclose it.
I don’t get it, if AI is so great and the future, wouldn’t you be happy to disclose your use of it in your product?
Usually it’s more responsible to disclose things.
Exactly. It’s like hiding the amount of ingredients on the packaging for food, just because it looks bad and people would boykott it.
Weird way to admit they’re using AI, but OK.
Their next engine has AI baked into its very core!
Hmm… Do I side with Epic, famous for:
- Apple app store lawsuit because they didn’t get enough of the profit
- Google play lawsuit, ditto.
- Paying publishers to release games exclusively on Epic Games Store, pushing up prices to gamers.
- Many allegations by former allegations about toxic work culture, very long working hours, especially “crunch” times leading to burnout and mental health issues.
- Aggressive loot boxing and monetization of games specifically targetting children.
- Having to settle a lawsuit with the FTC for $275m to escape prosecution for breaching children’s privacy laws and forced to issue a further $245m in refunds to customers who were victims of “dark patterns” employed by Epic.
Or with Steam?
arent lootboxes a problem with valve too?
They effectively created the modern videogame lootbox, yes. However they haven’t been caught with their pants down specifically targeting children with them, unlike Epic.
Still, fuck valve for lootboxes
Its so hard to get annoyed at them for it though. Prior to valve a few other companies were doing it, but the items effected gameplay - pay to win bullshit.
Valve created cosmetics or balanced rare items at worst. They even quit charging to actually play the game (TF2 was their first). Meaning, you could play, and be as good as anyone else for no cost to you at all.
The fact that grew into a real world market, maybe that is where the complaint is? They have banned 960,000 accounts they thought were farming in 2026 and another 40 they knew were openly real world selling.
Yet I understand your point: people consitantly say stupid ass things like “my account has $250,000 worth of items!” when in reality digital shit shouldnt be “worth” anything. Its digital. It does not exist. But people cant help themselves in “buying” a crate and hoping to get the item that is “worth” something.
Kind of a tangent, but
when in reality digital shit shouldnt be “worth” anything. Its digital. It does not exist.
Should a book have no value just because it was written on a computer and published as an ebook? Are CDs, DVDs and blurays worthless as soon as you access their content? Is photography a joke to you?
Just because digital goods are cheaper and easier to reproduce doesn’t mean it’s worthless.
In this context they are though. For example a color scheme for an in game asset, that only works when a companies server is running a game, is worthless the minute the game ends.
I mean I guess you could take a screenshot and try and enjoy that, but you can’t take it with you in any other way.
Also a tangent: this is why DRM makes everything worthless. If you have a book (digital, written on computer) that is scrambled to never let you access it unless you have one specific decoder, it effectively is worthless. Even if you have a digital copy.
Making the game free was part of the model of the loot boxes - people are less likely to get invested in your moneymaker if they have to pay for entry to the casino
But yes. Despite being in many ways the first iteration of what cosmetic loot boxes are nowadays, they weren’t the most predatory about it
I still find it hard to be annoyed, who is stupid enough to pay for digital goods? Oh wait NFT’s were a thing once…
Should I feel sorry for stupid?
Kids are stupid, and its not their fault. They are by definition learning how not to be. Those i suppose I care about.
Like a casino did they try hard to keep them out? Maybe not hard enough. Did their parents? Probably not.
Everyone else that pays for lootboxes? Meh, adults make their choices.
I don’t think its fair to put the blame on stupid people when you have the best minds of the modern age finely tuning advertising and visual effects and psychological trickery to entice people into specific, addictive, behaviours
The only reason casinos try hard to keep people out is because of laws - there are no where near the same kinds of regulations about lootboxes
Anyway - we broadly agree with eachother and I think we both made our point :P
It’s bizarre seeing people side with Google and apple over their absurd walled garden percentages.
Not liking Epic doesn’t mean Google or apple are in the right.
The percentage is the wrong problem and regularing app stores is the exact opposite of what android and iphone really need, which is an unrestricted experience of using alternative app stores.
“we should be able to lie and sneak ai in. If they found out they wouldnt want it, and the people paying for it shouldnt have any say in the matter”
Utterly deranged take, as expected from him
He thinks his game won’t sell because it has the AI scarlet letter but if he doesn’t use it, his competition would have an edge over him because they use AI.
Does he realize how stupid he sounds since they would then have the scarlet letter of AI and his game wouldn’t and would then sell better.
I can’t even get mad, I find it genuinely funny that that’s the argument he came up with to elaborate on why AI disclosure mandates are irresponsible.
It’s full-on “no one reads past the headline anyway” effort-level without understanding that people who read past the headline are his only possible reachable demographic, because not looking past the headline is defaulting to the easy assumption that Epic is just spewing garbage.
I want to play quality games crafted by hand with love and intention and an artistic vision that the author brings to life.
Anybody who tries to argue that their product won’t sell if the consumer is well informed doesn’t make a quality product worth buying anyway.
They see that AI badge lowers their profits so of course they are lobbying against such thing. Big corps are not your friends.
Boo fuckin’ hoo, Tim.
It’s wild that a CEO can just say this out loud without a mob of haters trying to kill their product.
It’s not really surprising, they’re forcing so many slop tools into ue6 that they don’t want to ruin another engine’s reputation after ue5’s disaster.
They’re not interested in actually doing the thing that would earn positive reputation though, they’d rather hide it
they’d rather hide it
This is the part that upsets me most. That tells a lot about the person and their business. How can I trust someone who tries to hide information that I care about?
