Tim Sweeney fascinates me; he is an endless source of activity and interest. He is always whipping out a tendril of some kind at this or that - he doesn't like that Steam identifies works made with AI, referring to it as a Scarlet Letter, which it is. It's whatever the opposite of an Organic sticker is. And it makes sense why he wouldn't like it - I've heard our designers talking about how AI tools are enmeshed now through their industry standard software, and now Gmail literally tries to write my emails for me. I saw a video for the newest Unreal technology that involved typing prompts into it so it would draw over the work you did, and then you'd have to draw over that work and fix it. So, yes. If using Unreal is synonymous with AI, a big sticker that says so isn't gonna be super welcome. Luckily, they just remembered that they have their own store recently and are gonna work on it.

He's always thinking about what other people are doing; "ruminating" might be a better word. The only thing he has in common with Steam is that a lot of games get made on Unreal and those games are bought and sold by the millions there. But there's no meaningful overlap between EGS and Steam, except in the most rudimentary, definitional ways. I wouldn't spend anymore time thinking about Steam if I was him unless it was just looking at screenshots of Steam so he can make his store look like that.

His newest thing, Team Open, is because Roblox is another one of Tim's bugaboos. His answer to Roblox is that Roblox is such an existential threat to the medium of electronic entertainment that everyone should start making NFTs. He doesn't say the word, because nobody can say the word. It was exiled to the Wastes, and it glitters with lethal radiation. That said: new games come out and are obliterated so fast under current market conditions that people don't know if they should buy cosmetics or not. But if you buy a backpack with a puppy peeking out inside Fortnite, obviously the Xenomorph should be able to wear that in Dead By Daylight.

Also, to hear him tell it, it's hard to play different games with your friends - something that has never been easier. It's a very strange salvo, all told. Some of the problems aren't even problems, and the other problems that remain have simply been solved by someone else - I'm starting to think that's the issue.

(CW)TB out.