Epic Games reportedly delays its Marvel and Star Wars shooter to go AI-first

What did Bloomberg report about Epic’s Disney game?

Epic Games has delayed an unannounced multiplayer shooter that brings together Marvel and Star Wars characters, according to a Bloomberg report published on Monday, 12 October, and summarised by Ars Technica, Polygon and Quartz. The game is part of Epic’s partnership with Disney and had been planned for March 2027. It now has no release date.

Bloomberg’s sources, who were not authorised to speak publicly, said development had been slower than Epic expected because the company underestimated how many developers and how much time the game would need. The bigger change is how Epic now plans to finish it. In an internal message Bloomberg reviewed, one of the game’s directors told staff there would be “no more hand-written code” and that the game’s art would be “generated with full AI workflows”.

Developers were told to use tools such as Anthropic’s Claude, with people managing and guiding what the models produce. Quartz, citing Bloomberg, says the plan was shared on a video call last week and shocked a number of people on the team, who asked how errors in AI-generated work would be handled and doubted it would succeed. Bloomberg called it the first attempt by a major video game company to build a title with AI as the main foundation of its pipeline.

What have Tim Sweeney and Epic said?

Epic has not publicly confirmed the delay or quoted the internal message itself. Its communications director, Jake Jones, told Bloomberg: “We’re embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers who are the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do.” Disney did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment, according to Quartz. On X, chief executive Tim Sweeney posted on the same afternoon: “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.”

Outlets differ on whether his post came just before or just after Bloomberg’s story; on X it is timestamped 18:00 UTC. When a user told him he could not read the room, Sweeney replied that “much of the room wants it to be 2016 again, but it’s not”, and that Epic’s job as a tools provider is to design for the present and near future. In another reply he described Epic’s aim as surviving the AI revolution and helping other developers do the same. Polygon notes that he did not answer a user who asked how the pivot squares with this year’s layoffs.

What does AI-first game development mean here?

On the reported terms, it means people stop typing most code and stop drawing most assets. Instead, engineers and artists describe what they want, models generate the code and art, and humans review, correct and direct the output. That is a much stronger commitment than using an assistant for autocomplete or concept sketches, and it applies to a licensed game featuring some of Disney’s most valuable characters.

It is also a big bet on coding agents being able to carry a large, long-lived codebase. Evidence on that is mixed. A Harvard study of 718 firms published the same day found coding agents added about 30 percent more code without more finished work, because review became the bottleneck. Smaller teams have shown what agents can build quickly, such as ArtCraft’s alpha Rust clones of Word, Excel and PowerPoint built with Claude, but a multiplayer shooter is a different scale of problem.

Art is the more sensitive half. The game uses characters owned by Disney, and the internal message reportedly calls for all of its art to come from AI workflows. How Epic will keep those characters on-model, and what Disney thinks of that, has not been reported.

How did Epic get here?

The shooter is the first product of a deal Disney announced on 7 February 2024. Disney said it would invest $1.5 billion for an equity stake in Epic and build a new persistent games and entertainment universe with Epic that would work with Fortnite and run on Unreal Engine, featuring Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and Avatar characters.

Epic’s finances have changed since. On 24 March 2026 Sweeney told staff Epic would lay off about 1,000 people, writing that the downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025 meant the company was spending significantly more than it was making. He said over $500 million of other cost savings had also been identified, and TechCrunch reported that he said the cuts were not caused by AI making developers’ jobs redundant.

Epic has also leaned on AI in its games already. Polygon recalls that an AI-voiced Darth Vader added to Fortnite last year was quickly abused by players, and that Epic said this summer it would use AI voices, trained on consenting actors, for three dozen Fortnite skins. Ars notes that Sweeney said last November that AI disclosure labels on stores such as Steam make no sense, since AI tools will be involved in nearly all future production.

What do game developers think of generative AI?

Most of them use it far less than Epic is now asking. GDC’s 2026 State of the Game Industry survey, published in January with Omdia and Game Developer, polled more than 2,300 industry professionals. It found 36 percent used generative AI tools at work, and only 30 percent of people at game studios. Among users, 81 percent used it for research or brainstorming, 47 percent for code assistance and 19 percent for asset generation.

Opinion is moving the other way. In the same survey, 52 percent said generative AI is having a negative impact on the industry, up from 30 percent a year earlier and 18 percent the year before that. Workers in visual and technical arts, game design and programming were the most negative, and the most common objections were data sourcing, energy use and the risk to jobs, including creative roles. Those are the people Epic is asking to change how they work.

What does it mean for Unreal Engine users and other studios?

For the many studios that build on Unreal Engine, the important line is Sweeney’s promise to bring the benefits to all teams using Unreal. If Epic’s own developers spend the next months finishing a large game through AI tools, the lessons could show up in the engine’s editor and tooling, which is what his post implies. Sweeney has not said what those tools will be or when they would ship.

For the wider industry, the shooter becomes a public test. Companies have generally framed AI as help for specific tasks, as Google did when it opened its no-code Playground game maker to US adults. Epic is reportedly trying to use AI as the core of a major licensed release. If the game ships on a new schedule and players accept it, other publishers have a template to follow; if it slips again or fails with players, the episode is likely to be cited as a warning.

Workers will read it differently from executives. Sweeney says the aim is not to do the same work with fewer people, but the plan follows a 1,000-person layoff and comes when, by GDC’s count, more than half of game workers think the technology is doing harm.

What is still unconfirmed?

Almost everything specific comes from Bloomberg’s unnamed sources and the internal messages it reviewed; we have not seen those messages. Epic’s on-record statement and Sweeney’s posts confirm the direction, not the delay, the original March 2027 date or the wording of the director’s message. The game itself has never been officially announced, so it has no title, platforms or public description.

It is also unclear how literally “no more hand-written code” will be applied: whether engineers may still edit generated code by hand, which tools besides Claude are in use, and whether the AI-first rule extends beyond this game. Disney’s view is unknown. We will update this article if Epic or Disney announce a new date or describe the workflow on the record.