Epic Delays Disney Shooter as It Orders an AI-First Reset
Epic Delays Disney Shooter as It Orders an AI-First Reset
Disney put $1.5 billion into Epic Games in early 2024, setting up a multiyear collaboration built around some of entertainment’s biggest franchises. The resulting shooter, reportedly featuring Marvel and Star Wars characters, had been targeting March 2027 before development slowed and the project was delayed indefinitely.
The delay arrives after Epic had already tested the limits of AI inside Fortnite. An AI-voiced Darth Vader character prompted a hotfix last year after it repeated profanity and produced bizarre responses — a cautionary episode as the company now considers a far more sweeping use of the technology.
According to reports based on internal messages, Epic has told the Disney game’s team to adopt an “AI-first” approach: developers would oversee material generated by tools including Anthropic’s Claude, rather than write every asset from scratch. One director’s instruction was blunt: “No more hand-written code.” The reported mandate also says art will be “generated with full AI workflows.”
Epic’s public argument is that human developers remain in charge of the creative direction. A spokesperson said the company is “embracing AI-accelerated development,” while CEO Tim Sweeney described a company-wide reshuffle to “retool for maximum AI acceleration.” In a post amplified by Elon Musk, Sweeney insisted the point was not to make “the same stuff with fewer people,” but to enable teams to build “MORE and BETTER stuff.”
That distinction matters. Epic has previously cut more than 1,000 jobs amid a downturn in Fortnite engagement, and AI’s promise of efficiency is inseparable from workers’ fears about what efficiency can mean. For now, Epic is betting that its Disney delay is the price of a larger technological leap — not evidence that the leap has made game-making harder.
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