The glory days of Epic Games are long gone and Tim Sweeney is a god damn moron.
Headlines where I have to remind myself not to downvote the OP for sharing news even when I despise the person being reported on.
I remember seeing a joke once about what if Reddit added left votes and right votes with no explanation in addition to up votes and down votes.
I’m not surprised. People thought he was a good guy because he sued Apple and Google, but he did it for his own profit, not for the principle. And now he wants AI slop games for his own profit, too.
Him not ordering support for Fortnite on Linux says it all about how serious he actually is about wanting to escape OS ecosystems like Apple, Google, and Windows. He doesn’t care about alternatives.
His only goal is getting more profit, since when it comes to supporting movements that would help Linux grow that might allow him to not be at the mercy of other corporations he chooses to do nothing. As long as he makes profit he is happy to be on copilot riddled Windows and spyware Google Android. He considers Linux a waste of money to put resources towards.
He’s not wrong about the main point, but I think it just means you need to be clearer about the AI disclosure. Was this AI generated images, text, or voices? Was the codebase just using small amounts of AI tab completion or substantial portions of AI generated code?
That’s nuance. Don’t make the MBA decision maker’s heads explode.
Google link? What is it? Won’t click.
They can skip the AI label and get down to brass tacks with a “this game sucks” label.
This guy is just a straight up villain.
Valve revolutionized Linux gaming; Tim categorically rejects it.
Valve banned shitcoins and blockchain scams; Tim welcomed them with open arms.
Valve enforces honesty regarding AI slop; Tim wants to literally deceive people.
All that on top of what they did with third-party exclusives.He’s like that annoying kid who didn’t get invited to a birthday party and vowed to always do the opposite of what the popular kid does. Petulant fucking overgrown child.
Valve banned shitcoins and blockchain scams
would’ve been nice if they banned gambling, too, but that’s part of their business model unfortunately.
I hear people say this sometimes, but I don’t know what they mean. Is there part of Valve’s system that has a gambling mechanic I’ve just never engaged with?
Or is it one of their games that has gambling?
Because I’ve been using it for years as basically my sole gaming interface and haven’t seen any gambling.
The short version is that an enormous, multibillion dollar gambling industry has been built around Valve’s item marketplace, and in particular around CS:GO skins. If that sounds completely insane and stupid, I’m with you, but it exists. Valve takes their typical cut off of all of these trades, and thus derives massive profits from it.
Here’s the long version: https://peertube.gravitywell.xyz/videos/watch/a8e6d20c-3003-4b14-b9c4-cb6a25b238e7?isPeertubeContent=1
Huh. I didn’t know this was a feature Steam had. Weird!
Mainly Team Fortress 2 and Counter Strike GO/2, cuz both of them have cosmetics with rarities obtained via what effectively amounts to lootboxes. In one sense they also have an out-of-game economy around these things where these items are traded for actual money
There is a massive secondary market for in-game items (primarily CS skins) that Valve refuses to combat or even officially acknowledge. Some of it is legitimate, some of it is literal lottery for children. And since every transaction takes place on Steam, they get a cut of that.
TF2 was the original gacha game.
Loot boxes in Counter-Strike
All their big multiplayer games have lootboxes and stuff like that.
At least the shit is all cosmetic not like EA sports games with their UT packs I guess. Low bar.
It might be cosmetic, but it can be sold, which fuels the addiction mechanic. EA is bad, too, but this whataboutism.
I think difference is EA is more a game company so people see a game they like then judge the monetization because its a full priced game that turns out to have f2p monetization.
But, Valve is more judged for its experience as a launcher and less for its games. So with the launcher itself being the draw things like Valve game lootboxes can be something people are completely unexposed to as they play other games.
But, EA is still at a stage where the products that receive the most visibility are their games, and the launcher and services side so underwhelming it isn’t a selling point.
Its like Costco versus a company known for its pizza. Costco is a warehouse store people love going to that happens to sell pizza, but is judged on multiple things that draw them there over other stores as opposed to pizza. A pizza company is just known primarily for its pizza so judged on the quality of their pizza.
The launcher?! This bloatware is the second worst thing about Valve’s services right after the gamble mechanics.
Gambling mechanic is as impactful to me as Costco selling alcohol and junk food. I don’t play those games, so only reason I’m even aware of it is because of people bringing it up. Those who seek it out can get it those who come for other things can avoid it.
And I like the steam launcher when it comes to linux compatibility, steam workshop, reviews, categorizing my games, note function, and gamepad support. I absolutely would not want to go back to the old days of CDs for games. Too many to manage and keep track of. And I like my Steam Deck for introducing me to Linux gaming, and being one of the few launchers that actually has Linux support and doesn’t need to rely on third party work arounds.
Those who don’t value that can buy from Epic or other launchers the way some people don’t see the difference buying from Costco vs Walmart and see membership fees as a waste of money. Or go over to consoles to be free of launchers entirely.
I’d say the only thing that bothers me about Steam is that you can’t completely ignore updates for games, so have to go into offline mode or save a copy then update then replace the directory or use steam console to retrieve the old version if you accidentally updated. That’s been my only gripe as a Steam user for games like Skyrim where I don’t want updates.
I don’t want to discredit Steam’s features like compatibility layers, but the software itself is a mess. It is an unnessecary RAM-heavy chromium instance, to be fair, just like most other launchers. I replaced it with Playnite which is streamlined, responsive and more feature rich for managing a library (Steam still needs to be installed of course because they don’t offer offline installer like GOG). And I’d argue that console user saren’t free of launcher, they are locked into a very specific one.
But as someone who’s neither been to Costco nor Walmart, what is the difference?
LordGabn has to buy Aston Martin’s so how.
Tim’s strategy seems to be “Whatever Valve drops, we take because we feel Valve is missing out on something BIG! It’ll make US look great!”
And while the sad truth of the matter could very well be a maybe, depending on how the pure-epic userbase are over there towards it, it still pales to everything Steam has been built to be.
definitely keep doing it then. Sweeney is consistently on the wrong side.
Bingo! Valve is one hell of a monopoly, but they don’t totally fuck their customers. Sweeney has to answer to his shareholders. Those are the real customers; not you and me.
Sweeney has to answer to his shareholders.
which is like 40% tencent.
Not 10%? I thought tencents thing was they just have a 10% share in an absurd amount of stuff
Both Valve and Epic are private companies and thus have a bit more of a say over what they do than public companies would. Sweeney actually just answers to himself, and I mean that pejoratively, otherwise he would have invested in EGS more to compete with Steam and focused more on Unreal Engine’s near-monopoly in the AAA space.
Instead, he focused on “owning” the metaverse, and courting crypto. If I were a shareholder, I would say he wasn’t acting in my best interests.
And if it’s as he says, and eventually all games get labeled that way, what’s his problem with that? Man just doesn’t want to compete.
I don’t want AI-generated assets in games at the expense of past, present, and future artists – artists that created all the source material in the first place and had it pirated by corporations who had enough money to ignore all existing IP law globally.
If Tim Sweeney is fine with pirating other’s art, he should be cool with people pirating his games.
Yeah this is my take as well. AI can be a useful tool but putting people out of work so you can save money to create soulless art is just wrong.
Of course epic doesn’t understand empowering consumers with information. They don’t care about consumers. If they did, they’d maybe try adding some long requested features to their storefront.
Sweeney’s customers are the shareholders. Not the gamers.
And that’s why he’ll fail.
Beyond just Tim Sweeney sounding dumb, there’s something truly evil and malicious about this framing.
His response was to a tweet that said: Steam and all digital marketplaces need to drop the “Made with AI” label. It doesn’t matter anymore. (Emphasis mine)
All well and good for that guy maybe, but why do they need to drop it and why does Tim Sweeney agree? Why is less information for the people that want to have it a necessity. And WHY does he feel compelled to comment on the behavior of his competitors in this way.
Fucking ghouls, the whole lot of them. I hope their AI creations destroy them and they suffer even a single moment of hubris.
People that are wrong this often and have the amount of power a CEO can exert over their company never ever realize they are wrong.
Because of this, they never experienced hubris or any kind of personal growth for that matter as long as it’s coming from this dumbfuck endstage capitalistic nightmare pipeline.
They never experience hubris?
Tim Sweeney lives the very definition.
Their point seems to be that you misunderstand the word hubris. Hubris is a negative trait, not a positive one. Maybe you meant humility?
My point is that I think we can experience their hubris but they cannot because they don’t know it’s there. Same would apply to humility
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I don’t think what I said needs this level of deciphering
Agreed. There’s probably one big reason he doesn’t like this tag and that’s money. He probably realizes that people will visit the Steam page for a game to read reviews and discussions even if they might buy it on Epic.
Dude needs to mind his own business. He just wants his customers to be ignorant.
Tum Sweeney: “Please stop labeling all these turds, because everything will be made with shit at some point”
Shit like this is why people only use that storefront for the free games. Completely out of touch.
Sounds like Epic needs to try to make a online game store to compete with Steam, but filled with AI slopware.
Wait a minute… lol
Epic Games had glory days?
Unreal Tournament 2004 was a spectacular arena shooter back in the day before Battle Royale and MOBAs completely took over. Aged like fine wine too.
Yeah, I’m old.
ut99 > 2k4! But it is a close call, admittedly.
But also, epic released some absolute bangers in the 90’s, though admittedly as a publisher. eg. Castle of the Winds, One Must Fall 2097.
Lesser known, but I cannot recommend enough going back and exploring the worlds of ZZT (and by extension, MegaZeux) as an early, amateur game engine. The projects are raw but endearing and an absolutely wonderful time capsule that still has a niche but dedicated following.
Some day when I have the time, I’d like to make an extended engine similar to this. Something with a simple scripting language, extreme flexibility in character and color sets. Ability to run and host your own game worlds over SSH or something similar. Just like a real spit in the face for triple A and going the complete opposite direction of minimal but super accessible.
somehow missed zzt entirely, never played it, seen some random screenshots back in the day and thought it was some kind of weird nethack -clone with occasional ascii graphics. But also the only few screenshots I recall looked like nethack, with ascii smiley -character instead lf @ as user avatar.
So… it’s some kind of game engine which you can script to make any kind of game, kinda?
That’s it exactly.
It’s unfortunately a lot more limited than you may expect, it’s designed around very limited ideas, but that said it’s still incredibly flexible and seeing how people have designed complex games around those limitations is half the fun.
MegaZeux is a fan extension of it (skipping over SuperZZT) that expands it further and breaks a lot of those limitations, but still has certain odd assumptions about gameplay very much from its era.
You can actually play right in browser, try Zeux 2: Caverns of Zeux, https://www.digitalmzx.com/show.php?id=182
It’s the first game released by the developer on the engine which is intended to show off a bunch of the ideas they had. It has a surprise ending that leads into a very bizarre Zeux 3 (which I haven’t beat yet). Zeux 1 was on ZZT but I think was remade for the engine at some point.
Spend an afternoon poking around the site and just trying a few games in your browser, see what it’s about! Then check out the help files and look at the scripting. The biggest downside for me is that if/then statements can ONLY EVER lead to jumps. You can’t process simple logic without jumping to a label to do so …
that does sound quite cool. I’ll have to check this out, feels like something I would have really enjoyed as a kid.
Thanks!
FuckyeahZZT!!!
So good.
I remember one must fall 2097!
First game I ever bought.
Mailed a freaking cheque internationally, and got a box of 3.5" floppy disks back about 6 weeks later.
Wild times.
I only ever had the Shareware version with a few fighters, but played it so much.
I’m gonna get the freeware version just for the nostalgia. I used to beat the piss out of my little brother in this game.
only played the shareware, until I found out that the full game was eventually released as freeware.
Then years after I went to game store and bought One Must Fall: Battlegrounds on release day… mistakes were made.
An it included linux native binaries! on the disk! It was absolutely fantastic, i played a lot in invasion servers for years and years.
Godlike
That was fun!
Some people don’t like to hear it, but Fortnite is basically the new Unreal Tournament… in the same way it’s the new Rockband. For the latter, it’s easy: Epic acquired Rockband and Guitar Hero creator Harmonix, and Fortnite Festival is just the latest version of that code, only you can’t use instrument controllers with it, only gamepads (or, I suppose, keyboards or touch screens). So what Fortnite really is, it’s a free-to-play showcase of the Unreal Engine. It’s meant to show off what it can do and anyone can pick it up and play for free. Of course, it doesn’t have all the features of Unreal Tournament. It’s pretty much just battle royale with base building. But it’s the newest version of the same engine and it’s a shooter. Not the same thing… but your skills with older UT definitely translate. My nephew got me to play it. I’d never played it before, and he had spent money on the skins and the extra stuff, so he would go around making big purple explosions and he’d attract attention. Me, I was blown away by the detail, but I found the movement just as fluid as I remembered. Once I got the hang of weapons and their grades, I was scouting out the best pistols and SMGs I could find, and shadowing his character, and when he got into fights, I’d circle around, flank his enemies, and we’d win every fight. We won our first match and I don’t think we’ve lost a match. If we did, we finished in the top 5-10%. We have an unconventional playstyle, and it’s really all me. He plays like most Fortnite players, and they engage him as such. I play like a UT player… or, more accurately, I play it like a Deus Ex player (which was based on the same UE1 that UT99 was). I pick my shots and I shoot to kill. My nephew doesn’t think I’m playing the game right, but he’s having fun and he likes winning.
That said, I don’t love the game. I keep it on my Xbox, but I only play with him (or, I suppose, I’d be open to playing with anyone who asked). Even solo (I did that once on my iPhone when Fortnite came back to iOS this year or last) I still do alright for myself. Rarely take the top spot though. I need a decoy. But if there are 100 players, there’s no shame in being in the last 5 of them.
only you can’t use instrument controllers with it
Not 100% on drum compatibility as I have no interest in Festival, but it not only supports guitar controllers, but PDP even made new models for it.
RIP Rock Band, fuck Epic.
Oh, so you have to buy new ones? Yeah, no. I have Xbox 360 and Xbox One (RB3 and RB4 era) instruments and neither generation work. I’m not buying a new guitar for Fortnite. That’s crazy.
I heard there’s a new guitar controller out (Gibson?), some like 20th anniversary thing? And I’m wondering who this is for. These games are dead.
YARG and Clone Hero (and others) exist, they’re obviously not as big as Fortnite but big enough. Also the Gibson thing you’re referring to is from CRKD, who started putting out new guitars over the summer, plus the already mentioned PDP Riffmaster. So it seems there’s at least enough demand out there that 2 companies started making new controllers for these games.
Epic Megagames certainly did.
Jill of.the Jungle was fun
Unreal 1 was a milestone, and Unreal Engine always has been very popular, now more than ever.
Gears of War was huge.
Unreal Tournament was pretty big for several iterations.
Unreal engine is STILL used by half the video game industry.
Objectively yes. From the 90s to the early ‘10s.
