Tim Sweeney and the Epic misunderstanding he has about AI

I am no fan of Tim Sweeney. I, as a PC gamer, feel he cares more about getting one over on other companies like Valve and Microsoft than actually offering something significantly better for the consumer and the gaming industry as a whole. When the Epic Game Store came along, I really wanted to support a viable competitor to Valve, not because I believed Valve was bad or ineffectual, but rather because good competition is good for everyone. Valve had positioned themselves as the premier digital storefront on the PC over years and has repeatedly iterated on their store often adding new features when people requested it. But for a few years they rested on their laurels mainly due to the fact they could. There is a saying that ‘Valve does nothing and still wins.’ This is still true to this day, even after 7yrs (funnily enough to the day when I write this the 6th December 2025) of Epic Game Store being around as a competitor to Steam. Now Tim Sweeney will have you believe that he did this out of a personal concern for us gamers and that Steam has a iron grip monopoly on the PC digital storefront space and Tim ‘The White Knight’ Sweeney was here to come save us all from the evil clutches of Valve and the ever increasing power of the evil genius that is Gabe Newell. This is of course absolute bull as he had oodles of Fortnite money, and he wanted to show Gabe Newell and Valve up.

Now don’t get me wrong, Valve and Steam are not perfect. There are changes we all would like to see them make and there is a real fear that, even though they are not a monopoly, they do hold incredible power over the digital distribution of games on PC. When they decide not to allow a game on their Storefront (such as the recent game Horses that was not accepted on their platform) it can be devastating especially for a smaller developer without much clout. It is also quite telling that Steam was ostracised by the bigger publishers (EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar and so on) with them all deciding to not pay Steam’s 30% cut and instead creating their own launchers. This did not go as planned and very quickly they all came slinking back to Steam with their tails between their legs often with little to no fanfare from either Valve or themselves. Most people like Steam. Even the haters have grudging respect for what Gabe and his team have created. The overall feeling is that on the whole Steam is very user and consumer friendly. They do ask a 30% cut of sales on the site (reducing with the increase of sales numbers) but the publishers and developers do get a lot for their money. Now whether it is worth that money I cannot say as I am not a publisher or developer, but I would imagine that more money would always be welcome.

Tim Sweeney has repeatedly crusaded for various causes on the PC platform and beyond. There was his Apple crusade regarding their closed ecosystem and how this was bad for the people therein. Of course, once again, this was not out of altruism but rather because Apple Store took a cut from his Fortnite money when people played Fortnite on IOS. I have yet to come across a Sweeny crusade that is actually about the thing he says it is and isn’t in some way tied to him making money or at the very least showing someone up.

The Epic Game Store is appalling. Basic features have taken years to be implemented if at all. The store is unwieldy and quite frankly ugly. The free games are a fairly big draw to be fair but anyone who has been collecting them over the years have probably noticed that they repeat quite often or are often just not worth it. The idea was a great way to bring people into the ecosystem of the Epic Games Store but unfortunately, it was not followed up by the bear minimum of matching Steam for functionality and useability. Epic was the one company (aside from Amazon’s attempt which went as well as expected) who I actually felt had a good opportunity to at the very least compete with Steam and shake the digital distribution on PC up with some real vigour. But alas I think Big Tim either lost interest in favour of his campaigns or just didn’t really get what people actually wanted from a digital storefront. After 7yrs If they had given it a good go, I really feel they could have put Valve on the back foot.

Tim’s new obsession (this after Bitcoin and everyone’s favourite NFTs) is of course no surprise to anyone with a passing interest in gaming, AI. Again, he acts as if he is speaking for gamers and developers when he derides Steam for their requirement of a concrete AI disclosure. It should show people that he never really knows what gamers want. Irrelevant of your perspective on AI and both its application and level of implementation in game development, I feel there should be an understanding that at the very least there should be a disclosure to allow people to make up their own minds whether or not they would like to purchase said game. Even if you are all for AI and want more implication of it in game development you should be aware that some people are not and they should have the option to be informed of the use. I feel there has always been AI and the future implementation of this new wave of AI needs to be worth the human cost and we need to see actual perceivable benefits that are more than the reduction of cost in order to make the numbers go up. I feel that this is the driving factor in AI implementation currently and companies like Microsoft and Epic (and many more companies often by some are quieter on their use of AI) are using AI to make money rather than make better games or improve the workflow and work balance of their developers. If they can reduce their workforce and therefore their wage bill, all the better for the bottom line. As with all capitalism driving factors, the long-term effect of this choice is tomorrow’s problem to be dealt with then (and preferably by someone else). The level of redundancies in the gaming industry is alarming even if there are many factors that have led to this. When there is a reduction in the games sold or the interest in the games that are made, they will cry that gamers just don’t understand how difficult and expensive it is to make games (even though multiple games and developers show otherwise) rather than seeing the bigger picture or trying to understand what it is their audience want.

 The real reason Tim Sweeney want’s Steam to remove this requirement, is it validates an acceptance of AI use in game development. Again, it has noting to do with gamers or developers (his shield to hide the true reasons behind his interest in this) but rather with his own personal benefit. If he can get gamers to back him and get them to accept a removal of this tag, then he is validated in their use of AI or at the very least the acceptance that it can be hidden from consumers.

Gamers are not anti-AI as such. They want clear and concise disclosure when it is used and how it was implemented. They want to know if developers lost their jobs or were not hired to create this game. They want to know how the AI was trained and whether the creators of the creative products that were used to train the AI were compensated. They want to know if voice actors, artist and other creatives that have been the building blocks of game development for the last 50 odd years are being made redundant and their contributions to the field are being used to make them surplus to requirement often without the compensation, validation or at the very least acknowledgement of their contribution and influence. The people pushing AI do not care about the history and or contributions of the people who came before or who are currently creating the content that they are so willingly scrubbing educate their new toy. This is clearly evident when we look at how the current leaders in AI development discuss the ‘information’ they use to teach their AI models. Meta was caught using 1000s of digital books to train their AI model and when confronted did not see the issue. There was no thought to copyright law, personal rights or the creative rights of the authors. Metas response? It falls under fair use. Their defence is to use a loophole that may see them win the case if they get a sympathetic judge. Then there is also the numerous YouTube videos teaching people to us AI to write books to sell on Amazon promising $1000 a day. They are taking a skill that was often honed over many years and failed iterations, and reducing it to a technology that uses other peoples hard work and years of experience to create a shadow of the original.

The other side of this is games like Where Winds Meet, Arc Raiders and Embark’s other game The Finals. All of these games are clear on their use of AI and have clearly highlighted its use and described how and why they decided to use AI. There has been pushback, especially from voice actors in the case of Arc Raiders, but overall people were more open to its use than if they had hidden it and been found out. Overall people still bought the game. Both Arc Raiders and The Finals are both very positive on Steam as is Where Winds Meet. Whereas if a game fails to disclose AI use it is generally it is derided.

I obviously don’t know Tim Sweeney directly and can only base my opinion of him on the face he has shown to the world through is actions.  That face repeatedly shows a person who takes on a persona of the voice of the people while actually only really performing actions that benefit himself. He seems to do whatever the opposite is of whoever it is he takes aim at. Steam ban NFTs, he encourages it (obviously he was wrong based on the fact that NFTs are no longer a thing), Steam pulled back from Crypto he leaned into it and now he is using AI as a weapon to try drum up bad faith and feelings against Steam. He makes what he perceives to be controversial statements that he feels are in fact what others believe and therefore he is enabling a voice to those people, but in actual fact he is just alienating a group of people that he is courting in order to grow his business. It seems to me that if you want to know where most people stand on a particular facit of the game industry, look to what Tim Sweeney has to say and the opposite will often be true. He is in a phenomenal position that many of us wish we could be in to shape and encourage good practices in the gaming development sphere but always seems to choose to be contrary.

I do wish to be clear he has created many instances where he has benefited the industry but always seems to step on that rake. Fortnite was a masterful lane change from the single player Save the World game they were making to the battle royale that is a behemoth in the space and often the yardstick that other games in the space are both measured against and directly competing with for people’s time and attention. Unreal Engine, apart from recent blips that are part engine and part developers not utilising or optimising it, is a really approachable and user-friendly engine that has allowed many first time and inexperienced developers to create a game that would not have existed if not for Unreal Engine. The court battle against Apple and Google did highlight a concern that massive tech companies can create a system where even if they are not a monopoly, they do hold a significant amount of power. But instead of working to create a system that curtails that, he fought a battle that only benefitted him and his. His crusade against Steam is unnecessary as he is one of a few companies that is in a position to significantly reduce Valves substantial shadow in the PC digital marketplace simply by being better. There is no need to do this through active aggression but rather through creating a storefront people would rather use than Steam and thereby forcing Valve to be better. The bigger cuts to developers and the zero fees until $1Mil sales when using Unreal Engine were a big draw for many gamers. If he had created a vibrant marketplace where developers get a more acceptable (according to many) slice of the pie and by creating benefits to gamers for being there he could at the very least have taken Steam on and at the best forced Valves hand. But he didn’t. Instead as seems to be his MO he did the thing that benefits him the most in that moment and then doesn’t seem to understand why people don’t follow him like a modern day Moses.

His assertion that we don’t need to know if AI is used is counter to everything you see said by gamers in comment sections of the articles written on AI. People have varying opinions on AI use in games but there seems to be a consensus that at the bare minimum we should be able to have choice and agency to decide for ourselves where we stand on the issue. Tim Sweeney would have us not be able to have that choice. If anyone wonders why Steam, Valve and Gabe Newell are popular with gamers, it is because as a rule they believe the opposite.