Epic Games Shifts Disney Game to Full AI Development
The company is abandoning manual coding and graphics in its Marvel and Star Wars universe project
Epic Games is fully transitioning to artificial intelligence-driven development as part of its collaboration with Walt Disney Company. This is reported by Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources familiar with the project. The focus is on a shooter based on Marvel and Star Wars, originally slated for release in March 2027 but now postponed indefinitely.
AI models, including Anthropic’s Claude, will generate all code and graphical assets. Human developers will act as curators, overseeing and refining the outputs produced by neural networks. Internal communications from Epic employees confirm that manual coding and art creation have been discontinued.
The Epic and Disney partnership was announced in early 2024 with a budget of 1.5 billion dollars. However, the project faced delays due to staffing shortages and slow progress, and now, a radical shift in development approach.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney confirmed the sweeping changes on social media: "We are completely restructuring the team to maximize development speed through AI. The goal is not to reduce headcount but to empower every individual to create more and better, extending these benefits across all teams using Unreal."
An Epic representative told Bloomberg that the company is implementing "AI-accelerated development, where Epic developers remain in the lead—they set the vision and creative direction for everything we do."
