According to a Bloomberg report on October 12, Epic Games is moving its entire development process to an “AI first” approach. The first project affected is a shooter it is building with Disney, spanning Marvel and Star Wars, which had been slated for release in March 2027 and is now postponed indefinitely.
Citing people familiar with the matter and internal accounts from employees, the report says that going forward the project's code will be written entirely by models such as Anthropic's Claude, with art assets also generated primarily by AI, while human developers shift to managing and directing. Two phrases from internal messaging are quoted directly: “no more hand-written code,” and assets to be “generated with full AI workflows.” Bloomberg attributes the delay to the transition itself, combined with the project's already slow progress.
How Epic responded
Epic did not deny the direction. A company spokesperson said:
“We're embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers.”
CEO Tim Sweeney then posted on social media that the company has “a huge pivot underway,” that it is reassigning developers so the benefits of AI acceleration are maximized, and stressed that “The aim isn't to do the same stuff with fewer people.”
The statement does not contain anything like “all of the code.” Epic has not disclosed what share of the project's code will be AI-generated, which roles will change, or the new release date. Bloomberg's account comes from anonymous sources, so the specifics cannot currently be confirmed at the company level. Disney has not commented publicly either.
Connecting the last few years
This shift has a backstory. In early 2024, Disney announced a $1.5 billion investment in Epic, with the two companies planning to build a continuously operated entertainment universe around Fortnite. This shooter is a flagship product of that partnership.
In May 2025, Fortnite launched an AI-voiced Darth Vader, and players quickly found they could coax it into saying inappropriate things, forcing Epic to ship an emergency fix. It was the first time AI faced players directly in one of Epic's major titles, and the reception was poor.
In March this year, Epic laid off more than 1,000 people. Six months later, the company is moving its most important partnership project to an AI-first track and is willing to delay the release to do it. Sweeney's “not about layoffs” line has to be tested against exactly this timeline.
The industry as a whole hasn't gone this far. In the GDC 2026 annual survey of more than 2,300 respondents, 36% had used generative AI tools, and among game studio employees the figure was 30%. Of those using AI, 81% used it for research and brainstorming, 47% to help write code, and 35% for prototyping. There is a long way between “assisting with part of the work” and “no more hand-written code,” and Epic is the first major publisher to publicly sprint toward the latter.
What remains unknown
Stephanie Arnette, senior development manager on Fortnite, was more measured. Her words: “The goal is to make us more efficient.”
A triple-A shooter involves an enormous amount of code and art, and having models write it from start to finish has no precedent in the industry. Anthropic has not commented on Claude's role in the project, and it is also unclear whether the two companies have a dedicated agreement. When the new release window is announced will be the first signal outsiders can use to judge whether this path works.
Sources: Bloomberg, Ars Technica, CocoLoop; the Epic spokesperson's statement and Sweeney's social media posts were checked against the quoted wording, and the GDC 2026 industry survey was used to verify how AI usage figures are defined.