when is he is never in a meltdown, seems likes it every time valve hits some milestone with its customers.
Good grief is Sweeney an insufferable cunt.
Yes.
Imagine responding to one of the most wholesome people in the entire video game industry with “this is bullshit”
Real “Hans, do you think we’re the baddies?” moment
Not to mention that “Up yours!” in the end
Oh my god. I didn’t even realize that was THE Kenney
I’m out of the loop. Who is Kenney?
He makes a lot of free video game assets. 3D model kits, etc. Really popular among the Godot crowd, I believe.
Really popular among indie devs no matter what engine they’re using. Kenney’s stuff is engine agnostic.
Lol. He offers up kits, he mentions C++, and it’s a language I’ve never used (not C++). Lol
“Meltdown”
c to c++ isn’t really moving forward, it’s lateral, and i don’t mean that as a slight against c++ (for once, lol). same with 2d to 3d. turns out tim sweeny just says shit thinking we’re stupid, imagine that.
if he really knew anything, he would have said “c to rust,” which would have also been nonsense but it would have gotten a funnier reaction at least.
2d->3d – bigger number
c -> c++ – two extra plusses (and plus already means extra!)
games -> epic games – it’s got “epic” in the name
You don’t have to be a genus to see these are all better!
I prefer the original name epic mega games
Thinking C++ is advanced C is like thinking C# is advanced Java. Even if they were really similar at a point, they’ve moved on and diverged into their own thing. Things don’t necessarily get better; more often than not they just change.
C# is a bad example. I’m happy it became its own thing over time and has since evolved in a different direction. But it was most definitely and unabashedly Microsoft’s Java clone at the start.
It was definitely a reply to Java but I’d argue it was very much Delphi/ObjectPascal with C syntax. Which makes sense with the language creator.
Yeah, you just said the same the same thing I said with different words.
Java was also based heavily on Pascal at first.
A Java Application Servers Report (2010) opens with a brief history of Java that says:
It all started back in 1991 at Sun Microsystems Corporation, […] Patrick Naugthon, […] proposed a project to his friend and CEO Scott McNealy for the development of a small, simple, portable computer environment that could control all types of electronic components.
The language must use the principle of a virtual machine […] It must also be based on the current object-oriented language, C++, […] The project went ahead under the name “green” and the language was based on an old model of USCD Pascal, which makes it possible to generate interpretive code.
The Java development team has white papers dissecting Delphi Object Pascal for the discussion and development of Java features. This one is funny in that it discusses and discards a feature of Microsoft’s J++, on which Hejlsberg worked too.
Idk if Sweeney is trying to pull one over on people he thinks are dumb. I’d believe that he thinks those are meaningful changes because he’s just a deluded twat.
It’s not an exoneration. I’m just not angry at him, only derisive.
when the fuck has Tim Sweeney made anything open source in his entire life?
Maybe he meant taking from open-source instrad for paing for a service
Credit where credit is due, they did develop an open source VCS which is something
A few months ago they released a new version control system called “Lore” that intends to compete with Perforce https://lore.org/
Well damn, a pleased surprise, thank you kind Internet stranger!
That’s in interesting. i guess I’m not expired with overwhelming confidence though when it looks like their developing their next generation vcs on github instead of their platform.
Look, I get that we’re all big Epic haterd here, but this is kind of a silly complaint to leverage against them. Lore is intended to be used for game development where you have lots of large binary files, such as textures, audio files etc. The VCS itself does not have any large binary files, it’s pure code, so using git is perfectly adequate. And putting a project on Github makes it significantly more accessible to potential contributors.
Again, they intend to compete with Perforce, which is what nearly every AAA game studio in the world is currently using. Not git.
Epic have a git hosting platform / alternative to GitHub?
lore… their custom vcs. an alternative to git. that was the only thing in this thread. did i miss something?
As you said, Lore is an alternative to git (a VCS), not an alternative to GitHub (a hosting platform for git repos). They don’t have their own alternative to GitHub to use here.
Unless you meant why aren’t they using Lore to develop Lore, but it wouldn’t make sense to use a VCS intended for games and large binary files to develop software which isn’t a game. Lore is a competitor to Perforce, not to git.
i guess thats kind if my point.
it claims to also be designed for developers. It also claims to be for code. And perforce has a system for code reviews and merging. my understanding of these systems is the serverside code management(merge, rebase, conflict resolution) is a huge selling point.
I also understand git is the big dog and everyone loves the github workflow. But if you’re going to claim you’ve got something better, I want to see the proof.
Post a sync to GitHub. Show off your integration tools. have your contribution guide point back to your public instance where you show off how great it is.
This just leads me to believe it sucks just as much as every other centralized vcs and the developers will happily be paid to build it but dont want to use it.
it claims to also be designed for developers. It also claims to be for code.
Yes, it claims to be for developers of games and other “projects with large binary assets”. Of which Lore isn’t an example of, so it would be the wrong tool for the job. So I’m still puzzled why you’d expect them to use it.
This just leads me to believe it sucks
I’m sure it sucks, for all the reasons your listed. Using git is not one of them.
I like how he suggests C++ is inherently superior to C, or that 3D is inherently superior to 2D, in the same way open source is superior to closed source.
Despite >=90% of his companies’ codebases being strictly proprietary, and guarded so heavily you’ll drown in fines if you leak as much as 3 lines.
Well of course he likes open source, I’m sure a ton of it has ended up in their proprietary source.
Not to mention vibe coding wouldn’t be a thing at all without decades of open source for the LLMs to draw knowledge from.
I think in context, the C++ things makes sense: most games today are written in it.
But I thought exactly the same about the 3D thing. Does he know that 2D games still exist?
And C is also still used because a lot of low level infra still only supports that. Like, the drivers for his precious GPUs that run coding LLM still use some level of C code. So does some compilers. Those use cases are not replaced by C++. Because C++ is not a C replacement. Dumb ass argument.
Isn’t C++ built on top of C and able to do everything C can and then some? It’s been a while since I’ve coded in it but I remember that being a kind of neat feature in C++. (I’m not searching it to confirm - just chatting about it)
All C code can be compiled with the C++ compiler, though there’s some nuance (if you don’t mark the C code as C, it behaves slightly differently which could mean it doesn’t work).
C++ adds a bunch of language features (object-oriented programming and templates are two massive ones). This can make it easier to describe a concept in C++ than in C. But it also enables a lot of unneeded complexity (if C++ wasn’t the best fit, or if the programmers aren’t excellent) and the compiler is slower because of all the extra stuff. And the resulting binaries are much bigger. And it’s harder to port the C++ compiler to other platforms. There’s still plenty of situations where it makes more sense to use C over C++.
Good points! It’s been a while since I touched either - my current job is mainly webdeb/fullstacky crap and I haven’t touched c/cpp for years. Miss it though.
C still gets used for things like drivers
I doubt he writes code anymore and if he does he is wildly overpaid.
he will just US AI to write it for him.
Hardly a meltdown, it’s a single whiney slightly condescending response.
Didn’t you see how he SLAMMED Kenney??
Fucking BLASTED him! You won’t believe what happened next! CEOs hate this one simple trick!!!
Number 7 will SHOCK you!
It’s even more whiney when you imagine it him actually saying it out loud with his real meek voice and him unable to make eye contact with kenney
Tim cries himself to sleep every night because he knows deep down he’s just a cheap knockoff John Carmack.
Hey, you dont talk shit to Kenney! Kenney is a saint in the GameDev world and many of my learning projects would have no good assets if it weren’t for him and others like him. Fuck off, Sweeney.
Reminder that Unreal Engine is source available not open source.
Also a reminder that Valve doesn’t license their engine out to pretty much anyone!
IIRC they only license it out in SDKS?
Like GPL, you have to be a customer to be entitled to the source code and modifications are under a share-alike license.
You could sell the unmodified Unreal Engine if you wanted to but your customers would still be subject to the epic user license.
It’s hard for me to get past the fact that a person has willfully deferred their creativity and skill to an AI chatbot.
At that point, to me, you become a no talent ass clown.
At least of the folks I know that have gone all-in on GenAI, almost all of them never displayed much creativity in the first place.
One that I at least once had some respect for had walked away from doing any creative work 20 years ago. I frankly had sorted out about a decade ago that he was more “right place right time” than actually knowing his stuff. But he had a fairly common narrative I’ve heard a few times now: “I walked away from coding years ago, but I’m back in thanks to AI!”. There’s always good reasons they walked away in the first place that are generally not fixed by embracing AI.
Broadly the GenAI steps on creativitiy and skill by not producing precisely what the content creator wanted, so it favors people who don’t really have an opinion on the specifics, and without opnion it’s generally pretty flawed premise.
not producing precisely what the content creator wanted, so it favors people who don’t really have an opinion on the specifics
That’s an interesting point that I haven’t run into elsewhere!
Chances are they never had any creativity to begin with.
Also anybody trying to convince you that games made with AI are a good thing, should be evaluated with the same level of seriousness as people who tell you that fast food is healthy.
I have downed my opinion on Tim Sweeney. Down yours too !
A person?
Anyway, here’s a pro tip for your issue: don’t mind them. Get past it by just knowing they will eventually fall off.
Where’s the meltdown?
it was right after he got SLAMMED, and then later he was DESTROYED.
If he isn’t BLASTED, I’m not interested
personally the threshold of my interest varies between TORN TO SHREDS and ATOMIZED TO SMITHEREENS
I, for one, only read tweets if they are EVISCERATED
Well I only read them if someone is FLAYED ALIVE and CONDEMNED to ETERNAL DAMNATION. Everything else is just weak sauce.
Aw come on, being UTTERLY ANNIHILATED isn’t that weak :(
To shreds you say…
Oh, I’m sure he was caught in the BLAST ZONE of that BOMBSHELL tweet
That is breaking corpo face pretty heavily, imo. Starting with “this is bullshit” as a public-facing figure, in response to a very straighforward anti-AI take is about as meltdown as you can expect from a CEO on social media.
I guess we’re too used to melon musk and trump meltdowns, so anything that isn’t balls to the wall incoherent rambling is deemed like a normal conversation on xitter
Afaik Sweeney posts like this regularly.
You think lashing out and insulting members of the public on social media, who weren’t addressing you at all, is normal CEO behaviour?
I don’t know the relationship between the two. It was obviously a harsh response. But it was defending himself as a CEO that apparently is not just a heartless and skillless CEO. If that’s untrue, that’s mostly a separate issue.
But their main point, as I understand, is that the generalising critique of CEOs was missing the point that CEOs who apparently know what they’re talking about can also be pro-AI.
Now I’m anti-AI, but that seems like a meaningful point to make at the moment (although it was done aggressively, as I said).
Honestly, one of the things worrying me at this moment with AI is just how much pro and anti-AI can’t speak the same language any more. And I think this is an example. AI can be good or bad irrespective of whether CEOs psychopaths.
In fact, I worry more so that the anti-AI side is struggling to express our side of things clearly and convincingly. For pro-AI peeps it’s easy. If it does a thing quickly and easily, and that’s your goal, then that’s a win. Talking about quality and the fate of humanity is a different kind of conversation.
With this Twitter exchange, yes CEOs can be psychopaths. But I’m not sure that’s the important point. A world run by Big Corpo is much more psychopathic while there will always be some CEOs in that system who aren’t all bad. Maybe a pedantic point. But in this case, I’m not sure Kenney win the argument, at least not for many of the readers we’d need to convince.
But their main point, as I understand, is that the generalising critique of CEOs was missing the point that CEOs who apparently know what they’re talking about can also be pro-AI.
Um, I guess? But do keep in mind, if there were a league of companies all dumping arsenic into a river, it would seem a little odd to me to insist that “some of them aren’t crazy.”
Like, I think that dumping arsenic into the water supply—at all—is sort of mentally disqualifying. Only anti-social, selfish, narcissistic psychopaths are capable of doing that. There’s no room for such a person to destroy public resources like that and be considered polite, if misguided company.
I worry more so that the anti-AI side is struggling to express our side of things clearly and convincingly.
Maybe. It’s a question that’s always worth asking. That said, though, is convincing them with reason really what we’re trying to do? Have you tried reasoning with a 9/11 truther, for instance?
Reason is a very powerful tool, but it only works if the people you’re talking to are interested in the truth.
Racists are not defeated because they are convinced that their welfare-queen idea doesn’t make any sense, or that it doesn’t bore out in the data. They are defeated when their sentiments are socially stamped out, when airing out one’s racism gets you publically flogged and discarded.
I just—in general, I don’t see the point in nit-picking people’s arguments against AI or CEOs when public disgust for it is what’s measurably important.
I feel like we’re more or less saying the same thing here. I think the initial argument was a fairly logical and dry one about what skills CEOs do and don’t have, not, as I think we both claim is more important, that they work for companies in capitalism, with all that that entails, such that the marketable qualities of the CEO as a person are a distraction.
No, what I’m saying is that being this into AI is mentally disqualifying. We can conclude the CEO is mental because his interests are mental.
Sure. Either way, that’s not the argument that was made in the tweet. It was much more specific and easily countered, which is my broader point.
I still don’t think you understand what I’m saying.
Tim Sweeney can say that he is skilled, actually, but 1), I don’t believe him, and 2) his use of AI is disqualifying. He can say “but I do value the craft of making things,” and I can say “no, he doesn’t; here’s the evidence: he uses AI.”
Great post, and this especially:
I worry more so that the anti-AI side is struggling to express our side of things clearly and convincingly.
Totally agree. At a certain point, simply calling out slop (deserved though it is) just becomes part of the background noise because it’s so commonplace.
I’m so sick of having to create more and more convincingly nuanced arguments to convince the thickest people that the most obvious shit is a problem. Can’t we just start beating them?
I’m totally with you. But I think that’s where we are. As I see it at the moment the big points are
- “safety”, which is a lot like climate change (yay),
- power and wealth concentration, which I’m surprised I don’t hear more about
- enslavement of potentially conscious creatures (again more of a future problem thing but a serious one)
- a human and even spiritual urge to not reduce ourselves to mere operators of machines, which is a pretty basic matter of taste but which gets Amish pretty quickly.
These are all big “what is life about” issues that are just hard to get penetration on. Only the second is material right now. Maybe it’s an issue with today’s society that we’ve forgotten how to talk about these sorts of things. But maybe we’re just wired to jump off of these sorts of cliffs. I don’t know.
I honestly don’t thing this will be the end of humanity. It could be, but I’d bet on some weird future first. Could it be better. Yea. But again, we’re a funny bunch.
Probably right that no one won any hearts and minds here, both sides of the debate saw the exchange and likely thought they were vindicated.
Always particularly the case in a “micro logging” format.
Good to emphasize “slop” rather than AI, that by volume most AI content inflicted on people is low quality. Likely as much due to the uninspired laziness behind the work as the AI tendencies itself. Turns out when someone barely invests effort, the result is typically crap. Going from a reality where it takes a great deal of passion to start to produce stuff to any casual interest can be manifested in a superficially consistent way results in “slop”.
Similar things in artisanal furniture. Artisanal furniture can be supremely interesting, and mass produced stuff is slop. Though at least some of it is quality from a functional perspective, it is pretty much slop from a creative perspective. However there were took the trade as there was more demand than artisans could satisfy because each time consuming piece could only serve one customer. In the digital realm, you can have arbitrarily many customers, so the pressure isn’t really there to make compromises for the sake of creative volume.
Can you cite the “lashing out” and “insulting”? It seems to be missing from the screenshot.
Do you not understand that „up yours“ is an insult or are you purposefully trolling?
I think he was saying “I upped my expectations and so should you”.
I think Tim is very well aware of the double meaning of his use of “Up yours!” in that context. Both telling Kenny to level up and go fuck themselves at the same time.
That’s a pretty classic way of sneaking that particular phrase in with plausible deniability. Pat Paulsen made it famous.
Tim probably asked an LLM for a clever insult and it spat out a Pat quote.
Another one liner that still stuck with me was, “why spend billions on foreign military dictatorships, when we can use the money to better take care of the one we have at home?” Some things never change.
Okay, assuming your tinfoil hat theory of the secret up yours is true, where’s the meltdown?
Have you seriously never seen someone do the ‘so up yours!’ schtick? Have you managed to never interact with a Gen-Xer in your life?
He’s saying both.
Yeah I don’t think that’s what “up yours” means in that context.
Anyone using it in that manner absolutely means it that way in context. It’s a gag that’s decades old, a staple of Gen X culture, which is squarely Tim Sweeney.
How great of you to know everything about what everyone else thinks and does.
/GenX
American GenX? It feels impossible that an American GenX wouldn’t get the blatant reference Tim is making…
It’s wild watching people admit they don’t have reading comprehension anymore.
Not getting the double meaning of the “up yours” is also wild.
Literacy is dead.
when he starts a reply with “Bullshit”
Up yours!
See, you see what he did there?
Such clever, much wow.
Granted, this isn’t on the same level of Elon’s worldstarhiphop all time champion platinum level of telling every Twitter advertiser to go fuck themselves, to their faces, in person, while strung out on ketamine…
But this is highly unprofessional.
The “up yours” perhaps? Doesn’t seem worthy of a meltdown to me though.
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Yea. I’m scared that anti-AI types are losing “the argument” by sometimes being silly or struggling to articulate the big important issues rather than dwelling on smaller easily countered points or points that the world has just moved on from.
As a wannabe game dev in Godot: it is absolutely insane what Kenney is putting out there for free. They are legends.
Do yourself a favor and drop the “wannabe” part of that self identifier. If you’re making games, you’re a game dev.
