Tim Sweeney Is Now Saying Valve Has “Held Gaming Back For Years”

Tim Sweeney’s Steam Beef Continues, Says Platform Has “Held Gaming Back For Years” Published Oct 27, 2026, 10:07 AM EDT Sam Woods is TheGamer’s Senior Reporter. He’s been in games journalism since 2020 and has undertaken a variety of roles in that time. These have included roles such as SEO Editor, Managing Editor at DualShockers, and Global Head of Gaming, and he's also been seen on the BBC. He was promoted to the Senior Reporter position in 2025 following a series of high-quality reports and exclusives for TheGamer. Since 2020, Sam has written over 3,000 articles and specializes in telling the stories of the people behind the games. He’s interviewed the biggest game directors, some of the industry’s top talents, told the stories of how indie games came to be, and spoken to players about what really makes them tick. He’s also interviewed some of the world’s biggest musical artists to find out how the medium has inspired their work, and TV and Film actors about their roles in video game adaptations. He even hosted a PAX panel in 2021 and made a documentary in 2024 surrounding the creation of a Disney game. Alongside this, Sam focuses on breaking news. He got the scoop on Perfect Dark’s cancellation, provided context on some AI drama, and revealed that Lady Dimitrescu’s actress would love to step back into the character’s giant shoes. These articles have been picked up by the biggest gaming sites, including IGN, GameSpot, and PC Gamer. He also loves to dive into the numbers behind the games. Sam’s journey in games journalism has taken him all over the world. He’s covered Gamescom in Germany, Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles, and Tokyo Game Show in Japan, each on three occasions. He’s been learning Japanese since 2024 with the intention of identifying and translating Japanese-language news and bringing it to English-language audiences first, something he’s done countless times. Sam’s first review was 2020’s Battletoads reboot, and he’s since reviewed games in The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, and Pokemon franchises. Sign in to your TheGamer account For the last few days, Tim Sweeney has shown his whole ass trying to beef with Steam. Despite getting no rise from the Valve-owned platform, he's bemoaned that it still has generative AI disclosures and even "vibecoded" a new version of Epic Games' Launcher just to stick it to Gabe. Unfortunately for Sweeney, the vibecoded version of the launcher was a hot mess. Despite nobody taking his deranged ranting for anything more than what it is, Sweeney has continued, today claiming that Valve has actually "held gaming back for years". Tim Sweeney Is Claiming That, Despite All Its Good, Valve Has "Held Gaming Back For Years" Sweeney's latest bizarre tweet came after Epic Games' former principal animation engineer, Kiaran Ritchie, bemoaned the fact that Steam takes a ~30 percent cut from developers, regardless of their size. After someone pointed out the support Steamworks offers to Ritchie, who claimed nobody would pay close to 30 percent for it, Sweeney chimed in. "Exactly this. Valve has held gaming back for years by locking developers’ PC games into Steamworks’ social walled garden where players can’t talk to other players on iOS, Android, Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, or even other PC stores," Epic's founder and CEO said. It's another example of Sweeney trying to stick the knife in, and another example of it falling flat. The responses to his words were, unsurprisingly, probably not what he'd hoped for. "Tim, your stupid store doesn't even have user reviews, you're not allowed to talk about this. We like steam and valve bc they respect us, you clearly don't and these petty arguments of yours with people just makes us hate you even more," said MK. His tweet was also Community Noted. That note reads, "You can use Steam Datagram Relay (and its servers) on any platform as long as your title ships on Steam." It's clear that the Epic Games Store is losing the battle with Valve, and at this point, Sweeney just comes across as a petulant child. He's reaching Musk-levels of tweeting, and sometimes, it's best just to log off. Brand Valve Original Release Date September 12, 2003 Original MSRP (USD) N/A Weight N/A Hardware Versions Steam