The news: Epic Games released a preview build of a new launcher written with heavy help from AI, so-called vibe coding. Headlines suggest it's faster than Steam.
What's wrong with the headline
Epic's own announcement doesn't make that comparison. It says the new launcher is "way faster and more responsive than the current one," meaning Epic's old launcher. That's a very different claim. Rewriting an app from scratch on a different tech stack and beating your own heavy legacy version isn't hard to do.
There are no measurements in the coverage: no startup times, no memory use, no library load speeds, and certainly no numbers against Steam.
Where AI fits in
The "programming is hard, so we vibe coded it" line in the announcement is half a joke. The store's general manager gave a more sober account: the team started from zero, used AI to write and review code, and replicated the old launcher's functionality rather than its code. A small team could ship faster on Windows and Mac, with Linux promised later. The speed gain most likely came from the new tech stack, not from AI itself.
Bottom line
The new launcher may well be faster than the old one, which is plausible. But "beats Steam" is something nobody has shown, and it comes from the headline. It's still a preview build, so wait for real benchmarks.