THE CRUNCH
Epic Games has reportedly ordered developers on its unannounced Disney crossover shooter, said to feature Marvel and Star Wars characters, to switch to an "AI-first" production model after the project slipped. According to a Bloomberg report by Jason Schreier, citing anonymous sources, the game had been expected in March 2027 but has been internally delayed, partly because Epic underestimated how many staff it would need.
In an internal message seen by Bloomberg, one of the game's directors told staff there would be "no more hand-written code" and that art would be "generated with full AI workflows", using tools such as Anthropic's Claude, with humans managing and guiding the work. The announcement reportedly left some developers stunned on a video call, with some joking about whether they should ask Claude to fix its own mistakes.
Epic has effectively confirmed the pivot. Communications director Jake Jones said the company was "embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers", while CEO Tim Sweeney wrote on social media that Epic is "moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration", adding that the aim is not "to do the same stuff with fewer people". The Disney collaboration stems from Disney's $1.5 billion investment in Epic in 2024, when the two agreed to build a "games and entertainment universe" connected to Fortnite.
The push follows Epic's June 2026 announcement that Unreal Engine 6 will integrate AI models such as Claude and Gemini as "creativity and productivity multipliers", so the shooter's AI-first mandate extends a strategy Epic had already set out. Generative AI in game development remains contentious, with concerns about plagiarism and output quality, but Epic is among the first major companies to confirm it is attempting to build a triple-A game primarily with AI. The move also comes less than a year after Epic laid off more than 1,000 staff.