Nearly eight years after launching its Game Store and launcher to challenge Steam, Epic Games is deploying a new tool to gain an edge: vibe coding. In announcing the publicly available "Preview" build of its Epic Games Launcher, Epic wrote that "programming is hard. 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."
While the approach sounds tongue-in-cheek, Epic Games Store General Manager and VP Martin Keely told PC Gamer that the team "started from scratch" and used AI as "a tool to write and review new features and new capabilities from the ground up in a different tech stack than what we had previously." The goal was to replicate existing functionality without copying the code itself.
Speaking to IGN, Keely clarified that using AI to code the new Launcher "made us more efficient and allowed a small team to rewrite the code base and be able to launch it faster across platforms, supporting Windows and Mac, and we're going to have a Linux version as well."
Ars's own testing confirms the new Launcher goes from a cold start to the store page a few seconds faster than Steam. Epic also claims the new Launcher restores from the system tray to the Library screen slightly faster than Steam, though the claimed difference of 0.06 seconds seems so small as to be unnoticeable. The Preview build is available now for users to test.
Source: Ars Technica · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing