Epic thinks you’ll love its new Vibe coded game launcher
There are no two ways about it: the Epic Games Store (EGS) launcher is bad. Even Epic CEO Tim Sweeney admitted as much, calling it “clumsy” in an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman last year. So you’d think a redesign would be good news, right? Think again. Because the way Epic has decided to promote this release fails to read the room.
“Programming is hard. So instead of doing that, we coded a new Epic Games launcher that is much faster and more responsive than the current one, and has a new look,” the company happily writes by way of introduction in its latest Epic Games Store blog post. The announcement comes just a day after Sweeney said Epic was in the midst of a major AI pivot. “The goal is not to do the same thing with fewer people, but to enable everyone here to create MORE and BETTER things, and to bring the benefits to all teams using Unreal,” he wrote on X.
We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic, pushing developers to retool for maximum AI acceleration.
The goal is not to do the same thing with fewer people, but to enable everyone here to create MORE and BETTER things, and bring the benefits to all teams using Unreal.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) October 12, 2026
Even by Sweeney’s standards, the message seems tone-deaf. It was only last March that the company carried out massive layoffs that reduced its workforce by 1,000 employees. By Woozad’s estimate, Epic had cut its workforce by a quarter from the remaining 4,000 employees after a previous round of layoffs in 2023. And now we have this release that celebrates flavor coding instead of the hard work of Epic’s remaining engineers.
Certainly, the new launcher fixes some of the major problems of its predecessor, and in my tests, it is significantly less “clunky” than the previous version. Epic claims it is able to launch faster than Steam. Speaking of Steam, the new software allows you to access all the games you have installed on your computer through Valve’s launcher from its own interface. The redesigned launcher is also available on Linux, a first for the company, which is great news for those of you who want to ditch Windows once and for all.
What it doesn’t do is resolve the identity crisis that EGS has suffered for years. You won’t find any features or hooks here that aren’t available on Steam or GOG. Epic could use this new experience as a basis for building these features, but if I’m honest, I’d rather not support a company that wants to replace its employees with AI.
