Epic wants to pay you $50,000 to vibe code an AI slop game

Update: Since this story went live, Epic has changed the rules for its $2,500 "Glass Box" cash prize, which no longer mentions AI. The original wording is still included in the original story below. The company has also changed its FAQ for the event, which previously said that participants were required to use AI. Now, Epic says, "you can use as little or as much AI as you want."

Original story: Not content with the humiliation it has already received over the vibe coded Epic Games Launcher beta, Epic is keen to pay a whole lot of money to aspiring vibe coders in an AI-focused game jam. The company is promising $65,000 worth of cash prizes and potential $50,000 grants for "standout" projects – assuming, of course, that you can stomach being part of Epic's attempted AI redemption tour.

The 2026 AI MegaJam will take place from November 12 through 15, with registration open on Itch.io, challenging participants to build games using Unreal Engine or UEFN. The basic rules are roughly the same as normal game jams, which challenge indie devs to create fun, functional, small games under tight time constraints. It's a well-worn process that's created the prototypes for indie classics like Celeste, Don't Starve, and The Binding of Isaac.

But the key difference here is that Epic really wants participants to use AI. "Bring any AI tools into your workflow, from asset generation to coding agents. Get creative! Prototype the mechanic you never had time for, or try the art style you weren’t sure you could pull off," the company says in its announcement.

Cash prizes will be awarded in a number of categories, including $2,500 awards for the "best dev log showing how you used AI tools to build your game" and the best game using LLM-driven NPCs with AI conversations. For games Epic particularly likes, it's also offering "development continuation grants of up to $50,000 to keep building after the jam."

With six-fingered promo art for the event and a tagline of "vibe your way to 50K," Epic's clearly poking fun at AI critics, but it's not really clear who's laughing. The responses on Twitter certainly aren't kind, and general pushback from devs on AI has been loud and consistent for some time.

Certainly, Epic boss Tim Sweeney is happy to publicly feud with AI haters, and at least one former Fortnite producer says the anti-AI backlash is "mostly for show." But Epic's been fighting a losing battle for consumer goodwill ever since the Epic Games Store started its long, ineffectual war against Steam, and the company's "huge pivot" to AI doesn't seem to be endearing it to gamers, either.

Will a game jam sway public opinion? If the intent is to make people go "wow, look how quickly AI can make games," then I'm not sure how it's meant to be different from a normal game jam, where devs have been creating incredible projects for decades under similar time constraints without AI assistance.

Right now, the number of games I could potentially play is somewhere between 100,000 and infinity. Every day, dozens of new games launch across digital stores, and every day, I learn of a cool retro title I could go back and play on classic hardware. At this point, I'm practically begging every new game I come across to give me a reason not to play it, and so far AI-driven development has been a very handy line in the sand. I guess I can at least thank Epic for not wasting my time.

Xbox business manager says devs not using AI shouldn't "be in the business of being a business" – because he "vibe coded a bad but improvable game in 2 days"