Epic says it’s ‘vibe coded’ its new Epic Games Launcher with AI, because ‘programming is hard’

Epic Games has released a preview version of its new Epic Games Launcher, and says it has been “vibe coded” with AI.

Vibe coding is a software development method in which the user describes what they want in plain language to AI software, which then writes, builds and deploys the code for them.

In a post on the official Epic Games Store website, the company says it used AI to make the new launcher because developing it through traditional means would be too difficult.

“Programming is hard,” it said. “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.

Stressing that the first release “is light on features”, Epic added: “Think of it as a speedboat and not a yacht! Though it does have advanced digital commerce technology such as a shopping cart.”

According to Epic, the store takes an average of 5.47 seconds to load from a cold start, which it claims is 46% faster than Steam.

Epic also says the new launcher boasts “snappier navigation between library and store, and less load on your system while it runs in the background”, as well as an “improved library and download experience”.

Some argue that vibe coding is a risky practice, because by getting AI to create the code instead of an actual programmer, the resulting software could have bugs or potential security risks, which may be harder to fix if there isn’t someone familiar with the code’s inner workings.

In June, Epic detailed upcoming changes to its store and game launcher during Unreal Fest. During the presentation, its claimed that “every developer in this room and every player we have has experience challenges with the current launcher – it’s time for a change.”

It also claimed that the upcoming version 2 of the Epic Games Launcher would have a cold start that would be five times faster on average, but didn’t mention at the time that AI would be used to create it.

Back in February, Epic Games Store vice president and general manager Steven Allison said the launcher “sucks” and promised improvements were coming, but also didn’t mention the use of AI.

“We got a lot of stuff out the door last year, and this year is going to be probably the best year for that stuff on the ‘big rocks’,” Allison told Eurogamer at the time. “And the big rocks are – the launcher sucks. Let’s call it what it is.

“It’s really slow. It makes calls to our back-end services to refresh every time you click around, and depending on your connection, you’ll have to wait a couple seconds. And that just doesn’t feel good, especially when people are comparing and contrasting and dual using one that doesn’t do that.”

Allison said that work on improving this started late last year and involves “pulling the guts out [and] putting new guts in”, adding: “It should start to feel good, be faster and people [should] be like, ‘holy shit. It doesn’t suck so much’, and that will be a win for us.”