Epic Games has reportedly turned to gen-AI to finish up development on a shooter that crosses over Star Wars and Marvel, which has been internally delayed.
That’s according to a Bloomberg report from journalist Jason Schreier, citing anonymous sources familiar with the unannounced game. Epic’s in-development project – a collaboration with Disney – is said to have hit a speed bump, and the Fortnite maker is apparently telling its developers to embrace more gen-AI tools for the rest of the game’s production.
The new shooter purportedly features characters from both the Marvel and Star Wars series, and the company expected to have it out the door in March 2027. Now that the crossover project has slipped, Epic reportedly told its staff to adopt an “AI first” production pipeline and finish the game with tech such as Anthropic’s Claude.
In an internal message seen by Bloomberg, one game director told developers there would be “no more hand-written code” and art work should be “generated with full AI workflows” – much to the surprise of many workers.
“We’re embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers who are the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do,” Epic’s communications director, Jake Jones, said in a statement to Bloomberg.
“We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic, moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration,” CEO Tim Sweeney tweeted. “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.”
The Walt Disney company acquired a $1.5b stake in Epic Games a few years back, as the two entertainment giants agreed to partner on a “games and entertainment universe” somehow connected to Fortnite. There weren’t any concrete details on the collaboration at the time, though the duo said players would be able to “create their own stories and experiences, express their fandom in a distinctly Disney way, and share content with each other in ways that they love”. More recently, it was reported that senior Disney executives were interested in buying Epic Games outright.
Epic’s push for gen-AI to infiltrate almost all levels of game development comes less than a year after it laid off over 1,000 humans. At the time, CEO Tim Sweeney told staff “we’re spending significantly more than we’re making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded.”