'Little Tim is so obsessed with Gabe': Former Valve writer baffled by Epic CEO Tim Sweeney's attempts to compete with Steam via vibe coding

In contrast, Epic's store "always feels sterile to me—you can complain about the Steam comments all you want … but, what they also do is they give the player a place in that world. They give the player actual agency and import and power inside of that ecosystem." Yeah, that tracks. The Steam forum is basically a replication of the horrors (and hilarity) of Barrens Chat, just with a few less Chuck Norris jokes.

Appealing to vibe coders, then, is a bizarre move, since "they have nothing" for people who just want a platform where they can play videogames. "It's nothing about community … And this is your store that you're complaining that Valve is unfairly competing against!

"When you fumble your announcement this badly, and you fumble what this is this badly, and you're gonna blame it on Gabe, like this is Gabe's fault? That you decided to make a jab at him and talk about vibe-coding and say that 'making a store is hard!'

"It's just bizarre to me, man. And I know a bunch of people I used to know there that were really smart about how to communicate and talk about this kind of thing, [they're] gone. And I think they're gone 'cause of little Timmy [whispering]: 'Make sure you make a jab at Gabe. Where should we put it, first paragraph? No. Second. Second, we'll be subtle. We'll be subtle. No-one will catch it."

To be honest, given how tumultuous the topic of AI has been in video gaming, it does smack as strange that Sweeney has gone so heavily in on it. Sentiment's not the same everywhere in the world, mind, but a good portion of gamers and developers both are a little exhausted by having an otherwise interesting bit of technology crammed into every single nook that'll fit it.

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