Epic Games has delayed a new shooter in development with Disney and introduced an "AI-first" model for its development. Bloomberg reported on the 12th local time that instructions were issued to the project's development team stating that there will be "no more hand-written code."
The game in question is an unannounced shooter featuring Marvel and Star Wars characters. While it was targeting a release next March, no new schedule has reportedly been passed to the development team. Development was said to be slower than expected because Epic underestimated the required staffing and time.
The core directive is to build the game using AI tools such as Anthropic's Claude, with humans taking on the role of managing and guiding the work. One of the game's directors reportedly stated in an internal message that not only the code, but all art assets would be "generated with full AI workflows."
When the news was announced during a video call last week, some developers were reportedly stunned, with jokes surfacing about whether errors made by Claude would have to be fixed by Claude. Some expressed hope that the policy would be rescinded or doubted that the approach would succeed. On the other hand, Epic Communications Director Jake Jones stated that they are "embracing AI-accelerated development," emphasizing that Epic developers are leading the creative vision.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney also posted his stance on X on the same day. Sweeney explained that a "huge strategic redirection" is underway at Epic, reorganizing developers to retool for maximum AI acceleration. He clarified that the goal is not to do the same work with fewer people, but to enable everyone to produce more and better output, eventually extending those benefits to all teams using Unreal Engine.
In a reply to a user, he cited the significantly reduced time between coming up with ideas and playtesting them as the biggest change. He added that many recent AAA game failures stemmed from being unable to playtest game systems through most of the development process. In response to another question, he stated that a more modest goal is to "survive the AI revolution, help other developers do the same, and create better code and content faster."
Earlier in March this year, Epic laid off over 1,000 employees citing declining Fortnite engagement, while drawing a line by stating it was unrelated to AI. Meanwhile, in February 2024, Disney invested $1.5 billion in Epic to acquire an equity stake and agreed to jointly build a games and entertainment universe. Epic is not the only game company pivoting toward an AI focus. Krafton declared a transition to an AI-first company in October last year and implemented a voluntary resignation program in November, maintaining that it was not a layoff. Square Enix also set a target to automate 70% of its QA and debugging tasks using generative AI by the end of 2027.
However, Bloomberg based its report on anonymous sources and internal messages, and Epic only confirmed its direction toward AI-accelerated development without disclosing the reason for the delay or a new schedule. Whether the accelerated playtesting benefit mentioned by Sweeney will extend to this project remains to be seen when the game is eventually revealed.
