Epic’s new games launcher is ‘vibe coded’

Epic Games is announcing a big refresh of its PC games launcher today in preview, saying that the new version is “way faster” and now supports Linux. But the company, which has been publicly making a big push into AI-assisted development, also notes that the refresh was “vibe coded.”

“Programming is hard,” Epic says in a blog post. “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.”

On Monday, CEO Tim Sweeney announced that the company has a “huge pivot underway,” where it will be “moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration.” Sweeney said the aim “isn’t to do the same stuff with fewer people, but to enable everyone here to build MORE and BETTER stuff, and to bring the benefits to all teams using Unreal.” Bloomberg also reported this week that an Epic director on an unannounced Disney title told staffers that there would be “No more hand-written code.”

“We used AI as a tool for this,” Martin Keely, Epic’s VP and GM of the Epic Games Store and Epic Online Services, tells The Verge in a briefing about the launcher. “It’s part of our migration as a company to use AI in new and different ways.” Keely says that AI has been “super helpful” for testing and for “replicating the core functionality from the existing launcher,” and he also notes that it’s also allowing Epic to offer the new launcher on Linux.

Epic has been working on the launcher for “most of this year,” Keely says, and while AI has helped Epic “accelerate our development,” the team working on the new launcher hasn’t adopted the “no more hand-written code” model reported on by Bloomberg. “We definitely had agents write and review all of the code,” Keeley says. “We used it to replicate the core functionality.” But the development team “managed that process” and “supervised the entirety of what we did.”

Still, while the launcher team’s approach predates what Sweeney announced this week, “it’s on the same train,” Keely says. “The launcher is something that is demonstrative of the speed and efficiency both from the development process and the actual output that we think gives us confidence that the direction that we’re headed in is a positive one for our company and for gaming development overall.”

The new Epic Games Launcher preview will be available on Windows, Mac, and Linux beginning today, and the old version will remain available. (Alongside the Linux version of the launcher, Epic is also announcing that it plans to bring Fortnite to Linux through the app.) Epic doesn’t have a specific timeline for when everyone will have to move over to the new version, Keely says, but the company will do the full launch when the update feels “stable” and has parity in “all places that we need” with the current launcher.

In March, Epic laid off more than 1,000 staffers. “Since it’s a thing now, I should note that the layoffs aren’t related to AI,” Sweeney said in a memo to staff at the time. “To the extent it improves productivity, we want to have as many awesome developers developing great content and tech as we can.”