// PC GAMER — GAMING
'Little Tim is so obsessed with Gabe': Former Valve writer baffled by Epic CEO Tim Sweeney's attempts to compete with Steam via vibe coding
"He talks about Gabe's yachts obsessively, so this is not an accident."
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"'Think of it as a speedboat and not a yacht.' So literally we are on the second paragraph of their announcement, and little Tim is so obsessed with Gabe that he has to try and find a frame, a cheap shot against Gabe. If you've ever seen Tim posting online, he talks about Gabe's yachts obsessively, so this is not an accident," via Faliszek's YouTube channel.
We were all a little mystified by Epic's announcement last week that it had created a "vibe coded" launcher, mostly because the optics of the entire thing are… well, they're terrible. Just rocking out the gate with a statement that programming—the job you do for the product you sell, is hard, and that you've essentially half-arsed it instead? Baffling.
Joining in that air of confusion is former Valve writer Chet Faliszek, who worked on Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, the Left 4 Dead series, and Portal 2 before his departure in 2017. He spends about eight minutes ripping into the thing on his YouTube channel. And the whole thing about the yacht obsession, as quoted above?
That bit's true—here's Sweeney blaming the Steam Deck's price hike on the "component parts supply chain for megayachts." It's something of a fixation. As is, Faliszek points out, the immediate graphs comparing Epic's launch time to Steam's.
"Epic does have a problem—and it's a valid problem, right? Not only do you have to overcome Steam's first-mover advantage where they cemented their place in the marketplace, you have to think of what is their north star, and what is yours?" Faliszek talks about how Epic was originally a developer engine first—and they bolted on videogames to that and "made a mess".
"So what is Valve's north star in Steam?" asks Faliszek. "Gabe's talked about this a bunch, it's an MMO. It's that simple. Think about Steam, there's a whole bunch of places to express yourself inside of there, and you can do that by levelling up."
In contrast, Epic's store "always feels sterile to me—you can complain about the Steam comments all you want … but, what they also do is they give the player a place in that world. They give the player actual agency and import and power inside of that ecosystem." Yeah, that tracks. The Steam forum is basically a replication of the horrors (and hilarity) of Barrens Chat, just with a few less Chuck Norris jokes.
Appealing to vibe coders, then, is a bizarre move, since "they have nothing" for people who just want a platform where they can play videogames. "It's nothing about community … And this is your store that you're complaining that Valve is unfairly competing against!