Epic Games Delays Disney Project, Asks Developers to Use More AI

Epic Games Inc. delayed the release of an upcoming video-game collaboration with Walt Disney Co. and told its developers to use more artificial intelligence tools to finish the game, according to people familiar with the project.

The title had been slated for release in March, but is now delayed with no new date communicated, said the people familiar, who asked to not be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak to publicly.

Developers on the game, a shooter featuring characters from the Marvel and Star Wars franchises, were instructed to implement an “AI first” production model using tools such as Anthropic’s Claude. Humans will then manage and guide that work. “No more hand-written code,” one of the game’s directors told staff in an internal message reviewed by Bloomberg. The director added that all art for the game would be “generated with full AI workflows.”

Even before this announcement, the maker of the popular Fortnite game had been pushing hard for the use of AI across all of its divisions. But this is the first time a major video-game company has attempted to build a title primarily with AI.

"We’re embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers who are the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do,” said Jake Jones, communications director at Epic Games, in a statement to Bloomberg News. A spokesperson for Disney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The announcement left some Epic developers stunned on a video call last week, according to the people. Some made jokes about how they should handle errors produced by the AI-generated work, asking if they should ask Claude to fix its own mistakes. Some said they hoped that it was not a serious request or that the company would reverse course, arguing that the initiative wouldn’t be as successful as Epic hoped.

In 2024, Disney invested $1.5 billion in Epic, which is privately owned, in exchange for an equity stake. The two companies also agreed to a multi-game partnership that was set to kick off with the shooting title. In March, Epic said it was cutting 1,000 jobs due in part to slower sales of Fortnite.

Progress on the new Disney game has been slower than expected, in part because Epic underestimated how many staffers and how much time it would take to produce, said the people.

The use of generative AI in video games has been a controversial both among developers and gamers, who have loudly criticized games featuring content created by the technology, saying they are of lesser quality. A survey earlier this year found that more than one-third of game developers use AI as part of their jobs and that more than half think the technology is bad for the industry.