Tim Sweeney isn’t exactly popular. Every other week he posts an asinine take on X and is inundated with backlash, only to double down while a select few, also unpopular game devs rally to his corner. For younger gamers like myself, it might seem like the man behind Unreal Tournament let the Fortnite success get to his head, and is now trapped in a one-sided feud with Steam and Gabe Newell, but in reality, Sweeney has always been like this.
As highlighted by Twitter user Sinnoware, in 2000, when Thief and System Shock dev Looking Glass Studios closed its doors, Sweeney posted a response to internet forum evilavatar, in which he said some devs deserve the axe – likening it to when the comet hit the dinosaurs. “This isn’t a sad day, it’s an economically realistic day,” he said. “Looking Glass spent lots of money making innovative games that never sold well.”
Tim Sweeney Thinks He’s A “Cooler Life Form”
The post was met with plenty of backlash at the time, with players calling Sweeney an idiot and buffoon among sharing a few colorful things they’d like to do to him. But it’s been dredged up again 26 years later and is now being viewed under the lens of a declining industry where talented devs are being tossed aside as Sweeney gleefully embraces AI, vibecoding the Epic Games Store and even hosting a vibecoding contest. His complete disregard for his peers and the artistry of game development isn’t some outdated opinion of a younger dev who has grown; you can trace the roots of that post to who he is today, and how he courts controversy week in and out.
“Projects and teams that are not producing profitable games are being axed,” Sweeney continued. “Origin’s projects (minus UO) and Looking Glass are only the beginning. Some of the companies and teams that will take the axe damn well deserve it, and others are unfortunately made up of really good guys who just haven’t had the good fortune of producing hits.
This is the bit where the comet hits the earth and the dinosaurs die, but the way is cleared for cooler life forms to evolve.”
Sweeney clearly counted himself among those cooler life forms, but now he is throwing himself headfirst into the AI woodchipper – the very thing making gaming a completely unaffordable luxury. But what’s really strange about this post is how Sweeney could very easily share it today, verbatim, and it wouldn’t feel out of place whatsoever.
