Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney Escalates Valve Feud, Labels Steam's AI Disclosure Policy a 'Political Act'

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney spent the weekend intensifying his criticism of Valve, calling Steam's AI content disclosure policy a 'political act.' Sweeney, the controversial majority owner of Epic, has fully embraced AI, recently orchestrating a 'huge pivot' to retool the company for 'maximum AI acceleration.' Epic has long been a rival of Gabe Newell's Valve, with the Epic Games Store struggling to challenge Steam's dominance in the PC gaming market despite offering developers more favorable financial terms.

Sweeney is particularly incensed by Steam's AI disclosure policy, which requires developers to reveal the use of AI in 'creating content that ships with your game, and is consumed by players.' This includes artwork, sound, narrative, and localization, but excludes 'efficiency gains' from AI tools. On Friday, Sweeney lashed out at Valve's policy, stating that 'forcing developers to write a political statement to be used against them by the hate mob they're helping organize is abhorrent.' His comment sparked online backlash, with many—including developers—confused by the notion that AI disclosure was political, insisting Valve was merely providing clarity customers wanted.

'Customers have a right to know what they're buying,' replied David Goldfarb, founder of Metal Hellsinger developer The Outsiders and former Battlefield developer. 'They still bought Arc Raiders, they will definitely buy games they want to buy, AI use or no. Does it disadvantage small teams who need to leverage AI to survive? Jury's out. Calling it a hate mob is far-fetched.'

Undeterred, Sweeney issued a series of social media posts defending his stance, saying AI disclosures are 'just as partisan as mandatory political essays or forcing developers to list their voting history to drive cancel campaigns and public struggle sessions.' When challenged that he was being 'anti-consumer' for forcing something consumers dislike, the Fortnite boss compared Steam's AI disclosures to Valve forcing developers to list their political affiliations. 'Say there is a large contingent of gamers that don't like democrats or, equivalently, republicans. Should Valve force developers to list their political affiliation? Is that pro-consumer? Do you think that policy would have a positive effect on gaming?' he said. As expected, the statement was ridiculed in replies, with one person saying 'equating AI to how a person votes is pure cope gymnastics.'

Again undeterred, Sweeney claimed Valve is hurting developer revenue by 'undermining their business with these AI hate campaigns,' insisting there is 'a real economic cost to Valve's foray into forced political disclosures.' He continued: 'a substantial number of users would love to have mandatory political opinion disclosures for developers, with several saying they take it upon themselves to surface this info in reviews since it's not disclosed on product pages. The primary use of both categories of disclosures is to drive cancel campaigns against games and deprive them of revenue and livelihood unless they get onboard with the movement's political goals. Yes, blocking free choice to adopt productive technology is a political act.'

Earlier this month, Epic unveiled a refreshed version of the Epic Games Launcher, its Steam-like platform that provides access to the Epic Games Store, game library, social features, and a developer hub. In line with the company's AI push, this new launcher was created using generative artificial intelligence. 'Programming is hard,' Epic wrote in a blog post. '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.' Epic then launched an Unreal Engine vibe coding contest with an image of a six-fingered hand, presumably as a joke about poor-quality AI images.

Through it all, Valve has done what it does best: remain quiet. The long-running joke that Gabe Newell simply sits back and waits for his competitors to make mistakes seems particularly relevant here, as Tim Sweeney continues to tweet his outrage over Valve and Steam. Meanwhile, earlier this month Steam broke its all-time record for concurrent users yet again, with 43.5 million people logged in simultaneously.