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.
🤡
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.
Tim Sweeney claims it’s a “Scarlet Letter” which makes players “try to kill the game”
Yes, and?
Lol
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.
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Wait, so studios will have to avoid using AI tools, but then other people that do use those tools will be eating their lunch? Either there are a significant number of people that will base purchasing decisions on whether a game used AI in production, or there are not. This is a trivial question to answer by polling customers, or looking at what happens with competing products in your market segment, or any other variety of basic market research. Companies have to work with questions like this constantly.
Epic is exclusively mad because they think there are many people that will avoid (or pay less for, or delay purchase, or expect higher quality, or more worthwhile content, or… Anything like that) games that are produced with AI, and every game made with UE6 will have to bear that scarlet letter, and suffer lower sales. If they really believed you can make much bigger and better games with the new tools, then they would do it, and people will get over their skepticism to play fun games.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
Yes, but they aren’t as young of an audience maybe idk. One bad thing in common isn’t too bad.
can we have two weeks without a shit take from Tim Sweeney ?
Unlikely.
It’s wild that a CEO can just say this out loud without a mob of haters trying to kill their product.
Epic Game Store has really bad market share (estimates I’m seeing are around 15% of PC game sales, a large percentage of which is going to be fortnite) so nobody really cares.
So, if a dev uses AI, they fail because of haters, but they also win because they’re more productive than devs that don’t?
Being strong and weak at the same time is always a fun rhetoric.
Also, afaik, Valve only asks for disclosure of generative AI for asset generation, not productivity tools like coding assistance.
not productivity tools like coding assistance
Given how Microsoft has really jammed AI code-assist down the throats of developers whether they want it or not, it would be kinda crazy if they did. The “contains AI” tag would be on virtually everything that touches Visual Studio, hollowing out its value as an indicator.
I think that is a valid point. That’s why Valve changed the initial policy. If I remember right, in the beginning it was “Ai” in general, without this distinction. But this is still not 100% clear (even if we assume the devs are not lying). In example is generating code with Visual Studio “generative Ai”?
yeah it sounds like the old immigrant taking your job but also cashing in welfare
You just don’t understand Sweeney logic. If you use AI you are more productive as a developer so you win, but you can’t win because you need to let everyone know you used AI so you lose. So to keep the winners winning you need to make sure the thing that makes them lose doesn’t happen.
Okay, in all seriousness I can understand his developer-centric takes but it’s pretty clear he still treats gamers, the actual consumers of the product, as cattle. We exist only to give money to game developers so they could make games, at least according to satan Sweeney. I was just wondering if he’s finally come around with all the improvements the Epic store is getting but no. Let’s just hope that bright mind at Epic gets to keep their job because it’s pretty clear it wasn’t Sweeney’s idea to improve the Epic store.
As something of a developer myself, I’d argue he has a developer-centric take. He’s probably more focused on profits.
I’d say a developer wants to create a quality product rather than hastily cobbled together slop. Especially when we’re talking about asset generation. Sure, you save money and time by churning out generic AI assets, but you gain quality from an actual artist. I guess improvements on the Epic Store are exactly that.
Funny how the greedy of the gaming industry never understand that quality gets them money rather than quantity.
Very “if we stopped testing for COVID there would be no cases” energy.
Transparency sucks
– Every snakeoil salesman everWeird way to admit they’re using AI, but OK.
Their next engine has AI baked into its very core!
