Epic Games Store

Epic Games, the company responsible for Fortnite, agreed to pay money to settle FTC allegations related to in-game purchases. According to the FTC, the company unlawfully charged players for unwanted purchases, let children rack up unauthorized charges without their parents’ permission, and blocked some users who disputed wrongful charges from accessing their purchased content.

On the other hand, Epic Games issued a DMCA notice against a vibe-coded browser port of Fortnite on October 10, and Microsoft has issued multiple DMCA notices for Minecraft, Call of Duty, and Halo-related web browser ports over the past month. I could fill this article with dozens of examples of Microsoft’s and Epic Games’ love of AI, but here are two off the dome: Epic Games’ vibe-coded shitshow of a launcher that launched on October 14, and the mere existence of Microsoft’s Copilot.

Epic Games and Microsoft issued DMCA takedowns against browser-based reproductions of their game properties, according to a Kotaku report published October 26, 2026. Both companies are simultaneously using or exploring AI tools in their own development work, as the same report details. That visible gap between enforcement posture and internal practice is now drawing scrutiny.

However, there’s a less ambiguous side to this discussion that I’m far more interested in tackling: hypocrisy. Many publishers are gleefully and very publicly advertising their use of AI to develop games, yet two specific publishers are attempting to have their cake and eat it too in this respect: Microsoft and Epic Games.

Google and Epic give up fighting — third-party Android app stores are coming next week

Epic leadership professed interest in leveling the playing field for all developers on Android’s platform. But US District Judge James Donato expressed skepticism of the settlement in January, noting that it may be a “sweetheart deal” that benefited Epic more than other developers. The specifics of the arrangement were not fully disclosed, but it included lower Play Store fees, cross-licensing, attorneys’ fees, and other partnership offers.

Epic Games and Google have just jointly withdrawn their attempt to retroactively settle the lawsuit that’s changing how Android app stores work in the United States — and that means Google will be forced to carry rival app stores inside of its own. In fact, Google tells the court, it’s ready to begin carrying third-party app stores on Wednesday, July 22nd. Does that mean it’s time for Microsoft to launch an Xbox game store on Android?

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney might be one of the most outspoken people in the history of the world. He fought two of the world’s most valuable and powerful companies almost all the way to the US Supreme Court, insulting them again and again: “crooked,” “deceitful,” “insanely sneaky,” calling Android a “fake open platform,” calling both companies “gangster-style businesses that will do anything they think they can get away with,” telling me how Google’s Project Hug was “an astonishingly corrupt effort at a massive scale.”

In November, Epic and Google jointly proposed a settlement that would change Android’s fate globally without cracking open Google’s Android monopoly quite the way it otherwise might. Today, Google has decided it’s not waiting for that settlement to be approved: it’s moving forward with many of its proposed changes right now, rolling them out globally through 2027 — and we spoke to the heads of Android and Epic Games about the changes.

The CEO describes revealing the use of genAI slop as a forced 'political statement'

Sweeney recently attempted to take a swipe at Valve by releasing an updated, vibe-coded version of the god-awful Epic Games Store that he claimed ran so much faster than Steam, only for Steam to preemptively roll out its own update that already beat it. That was very funny. Now’s he back, this time expressing outrage at Valve’s requirement that developers announce if genAI was used in the production of a game. He has a dog in this fight: Just this month Sweeney horrified his own staff (well, those who remain after a thousand of them were fired) by declaring they had to pivot to AI-first development for a forthcoming Disney shooter.

As a result, the company announced Tuesday that it is laying off more than 1,000 employees, according to a note sent to staff and published online by founder and CEO Tim Sweeney. Epic also identified more than $500 million in cost savings across contracting, marketing, and unfilled roles that it says will put the company in a more “stable place.”

Hundreds of DMCA notices have been fired off by companies in response to the recent flood of AI-powered recomps. Indie games are the prime targets, with takedown notices for open-sourced versions of Mega Crit’s Slay the Spire 2, Maddy Makes Games’ Celeste, and Ludeon Studios’ RimWorld all featuring in GitHub’s DMCA logs over the past four weeks.

Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney has suggested titles that feature generative AI will be allowed on the Epic Games Store.

Tim Sweeney recently endorsed Elon Musk’s latest attempt to paint the nationwide protests as a leftist conspiracy — this time, one backed by billionaire progressive mega donors George Soros and Reid Hoffman. “Disgusting,” he wrote in response to Musk’s X post connecting the dots, then defended himself by citing his experience in the Apple lawsuit. (Not sure whether these are similar circumstances?) [Media: https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1898432621530460629]

<table id="DataTables_Table_0"> <thead> <tr><th rowspan="1" colspan="1">Bill Number</th><th rowspan="1" colspan="1">Congress</th><th rowspan="1" colspan="1">Title</th><th rowspan="1" colspan="1">No. of Reports &amp; Specific Issues*</th></tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>H.R.7891 </td> <td>118</td> <td>Kids Online Safety Act</td> <td>6</td> </tr><tr> <td>S.1409 </td> <td>118</td> <td>Kids Online Safety Act</td> <td>6</td> </tr></tbody> <tfoot> <tr><td rowspan="1" colspan="4">*Each quarterly filing is treated as a separate report.</td></tr> </tfoot> </table>

700 of 9,200 in 2024

Because Bandcamp became a subsidiary of Epic Games back in 2022, this makes it the first union under the big-name developer behind the Gears of War franchise and more recently, Fortnite. Prior to voting, Epic and Bandcamp co-founder Ethan Diamond were accused of employing union busting tactics.

It’s been months since Epic Games removed Horses from its PC storefront and the two sides are still feuding about what exactly took place. Developer Santa Ragione claims it was ghosted by Epic while the Fortnite maker claims it’s been transparent throughout the process. Now Santa Ragione’s co-founder and studio director, Pietro Righi Riva, has responded to the response to the response, claiming Epic Games’ “vague and semi-automated statements” provided little in the way of meaningful feedback about why Horses was removed from the storefront.

For example, developers at Epic Games made a number of changes to the popular multiplayer game Fortnite, such as reducing the resolution and frame rate of the game’s waiting lobby when a user had been inactive for a given amount of time. Epic Games estimates that these changes, which are imperceptible to gamers, will reduce electricity consumption from all Fortnite players combined by 200 MWh per day—roughly the same amount of power generated by seven wind turbines in a day.

Tim Sweeney responded on October 27, 2026. He said the controversy "conflates a number of different things," according to the Kotaku report. His position breaks into three parts. First, Epic does not allow use of Fortnite intellectual property without permission or compensation. Second, Epic's current terms restrict AI training on outputs from Unreal Engine and MetaHuman, though Sweeney said the company is working to remove that restriction. Third, Sweeney disputed the premise that all AI training constitutes theft.

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