TL;DR: Epic Games is reportedly moving its Disney collaboration to an “AI first” workflow, with models like Anthropic’s Claude writing the code and generating the art while human developers direct the work. The Marvel and Star Wars shooter that was due in March 2027 has been delayed with no new date, according to Bloomberg.
Epic Games has spent years telling anyone who’d listen that AI is going to change how games get made. Now it’s reportedly betting one of its biggest projects on it. According to a Bloomberg report summarized by Ars Technica and Polygon, the Fortnite maker is shifting development of its Disney crossover shooter to an “AI first” process, and the game has been pushed back indefinitely.
Bloomberg’s reporting draws on unnamed people familiar with the project and internal employee messages it viewed. Epic’s CEO publicly described the same AI pivot within hours of the story going up.
“No more hand-written code”
The most striking detail is how far the shift reportedly goes. According to Bloomberg, human developers on the project will now manage and guide code and art produced by AI models such as Anthropic’s Claude, rather than writing and drawing it themselves. One of the game’s directors told staff there would be “no more hand-written code,” Polygon reports, and that the game’s art would be “generated with full AI workflows.”
Polygon also reports that some Epic developers were shocked by the pivot.
Epic’s official line frames it differently. “We’re embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers who are the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do,” a spokesperson said in a statement quoted by Ars Technica.
CEO Tim Sweeney weighed in on social media shortly after Bloomberg’s story went up: “We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic, moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration. The aim isn’t to do the same stuff with fewer people, but to enable everyone here to build MORE and BETTER stuff, and to bring the benefits to all teams using Unreal.”
Why the Marvel and Star Wars game slipped
The project in question comes out of the $1.5 billion partnership Epic and Disney announced in early 2024, which Ars Technica describes as a massive collaborative “universe” of Disney content. The first big piece was supposed to be a shooter featuring Marvel and Star Wars characters, slated for March 2027.
That date is gone. Bloomberg’s sources say development had already been slower than expected, with the project understaffed. Per Polygon’s summary, Epic underestimated how many developers and how much time the game would need. The AI-related reshuffle came on top of that, and the game now has no release date.
It’s worth separating the two threads. The reporting doesn’t say AI caused the delay on its own. It describes a project that was already behind schedule, and a company that has decided the way to catch up, and to build more in general, is to hand much more of the actual production to AI models.
Epic has been heading here for a while
None of this comes out of nowhere. Sweeney has been one of the loudest AI optimists among major game executives. In a June interview with IGN, he talked about games with “the possibility of infinite dialogue with a really simple setup for creators,” and small teams building huge interactive worlds, Ars Technica notes. Last November, he argued that AI disclosure tags like the ones Valve requires on Steam “make no sense” because AI tools “will be involved in nearly all future production.”
The context inside Epic matters too. The company laid off more than 1,000 employees in March, with Sweeney pointing to a “downturn in Fortnite engagement” that had Epic spending more than it was making. Months later, Fortnite senior external development manager Stephanie Arnette tried to reassure people: “I know everyone’s biggest fear is, ‘Oh my god, AI is going to take all our jobs.’ That’s not our goal. The goal is to make us more efficient.”
The partnership with Disney has also had at least one public AI stumble. Last May, an AI-voiced Darth Vader added to Fortnite started repeating curse words and offering some baffling opinions before Epic shipped a hotfix.
How unusual is this for the industry?
Pretty unusual, at least at this scale. A survey of more than 2,300 game industry professionals ahead of this year’s Game Developers Conference found that 36% used generative AI tools in their jobs, including 30% of people working at game studios, Ars Technica reports. But most of that use was for research and brainstorming (81% of the AI users), with code assistance (47%) and prototyping (35%) well behind. Handing a major licensed game’s entire codebase and art pipeline to AI goes far beyond what most of the industry says it’s doing.
That’s what makes this project worth watching. Epic isn’t a small indie studio experimenting on a side project. It makes Unreal Engine, which a huge share of the industry builds on, and Sweeney explicitly tied the pivot to bringing the benefits “to all teams using Unreal.” If the approach works, expect it to show up in Epic’s tools. If it doesn’t, a delayed Marvel and Star Wars game will be a very public lesson.
It also lands in a busy moment for AI in games. Just days ago, Google and Unity pitched tools that let people build games by describing them in plain language, and studios across the industry are still trying to figure out where AI helps and where it hurts.
Related: Google and Unity Will Let You Build a Video Game By Just Typing What You Want and Microsoft Hands the Next Halo Game to Activision After Cutting 268 More Xbox Jobs.
Bottom Line: Epic is reportedly turning its delayed Marvel and Star Wars shooter into a test case for AI-first game development, with AI writing the code and generating the art under human direction. Sweeney says it’s about building more, not cutting staff, but the game now has no release date, and the whole industry will be watching how it turns out.
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