"Little Tim is obsessed with Gabe": Valve veteran criticized the announcement of the new Epic Games Store launcher
The story about Epic Games Store improvements didn't go without mentioning a yacht. Some believe this is no coincidence.
Epic Games recently introduced a new version of the launcher for its store. During the preview presentation of the Epic Games Store, the developers mentioned vibecoding (AI-assisted programming) and boasted about faster launch times — according to their data, EGS launched faster than Steam.
Former Valve writer Chet Faliszek noticed the presentation and decided to speak out. He started reading the blog about the new EGS and was drawn to one paragraph that mentioned a yacht.
The head of Valve owns a yacht, so Chet Faliszek believes that the announcement is taking a jab at Gabe Newell — "The first version [of EGS] isn't overloaded with features. Think of it as a speedboat, not a yacht."
Faliszek was indignant:
So, we're literally on the second paragraph of their post, and little Tim is so obsessed with Gabe that he can't resist trying to take a cheap shot at him. Am I right? If you've ever seen Tim's posts online, you know he's obsessed with talking about Gabe's yachts. So this is no accident. I doubt anyone else really noticed it was a jab at Gabe, but it definitely is.
However, Chet Faliszek's main complaint about Epic Games is the lack of a long-term development direction for the Epic Games Store. In this announcement, the developers focused primarily on launcher launch speed, library management, and downloads. Faliszek acknowledges that such improvements are useful, but they don't answer the important question — how does the company envision the future of its launcher:
I still don't understand where their "north star" is, because their store has always seemed sterile to me. You can complain all you want about comments on Steam, reviews, or a bunch of other things, but these features give the player a place in this world. They give the player a real opportunity to act, influence, and have power within this ecosystem.
In the case of Steam, Faliszek explains, this "north star" is the social component of the service, which EGS lacks:
What is Valve's "north star" in developing Steam? Gabe has talked a lot about it — it's an MMO. Just think about Steam: there are a bunch of places where you can express yourself, you can level up your account, get in-game items, and trading cards. Then you can trade these cards or collect a set, you can decorate your profile background. So Steam has all these elements that allow you to express yourself, and at the same time turn the entire service experience into an MMO: with leveling up and all that. And you also have "awards" that you can give to other people. It's a complex system that has grown over time.
It is noteworthy that shortly after this Epic Games Store presentation, Valve released an update for the Steam client — it is now slightly faster than the EGS client.
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