Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has once again publicly criticized Valve. He stated that Valve has spent years building a social "walled garden" through Steamworks, locking developers' PC games into Steam, and accused Valve of hindering the growth of the gaming industry.
The debate began when Kiaran Ritchie, former lead animation programmer at Epic Games, complained about Steam taking a 30% cut of gross revenue. He argued that this causes the gaming industry to lose significant income and claimed that a Steam alternative could be built in just one week using "vibe coding," with Steam's remaining primary value lying in its network.
Sweeney then turned his attention to Steamworks' cross-platform capabilities, claiming that its social system prevents players from communicating with users on iOS, Android, Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and other PC stores.
Community notes were subsequently added to the relevant posts, citing Steamworks documentation to refute this generalization: as long as a game is released on Steam, Steam Datagram Relay can also be used on other platforms. Valve describes the service as a virtual private gaming network, but existing information does not further detail the specific limitations of various Steamworks social features in cross-platform scenarios.
Sweeney had previously supported lawsuits against Valve, criticized Steam's AI disclosure rules, and attacked Gabe Newell after the Steam Deck price increase. Epic recently claimed it is using AI to accelerate improvements to the Epic Games Launcher. The current controversy remains focused on the differing claims regarding Steamworks platform restrictions; Valve's policies have not changed as a result, and no new business arrangements have been reached between the two parties.