Epic Games has decided to go all-in on artificial intelligence. That, at least, is what emerges from Jason Schreier's piece (published on Bloomberg), which reveals that the approach will be applied to a new Disney game whose development has yet to be officially announced. If the rumours doing the rounds online in recent months are anything to go by, the project in question is an extraction shooter in the same vein as ARC Raiders, featuring characters from the Marvel and Star Wars universes.
Epic Games bets on AI with Disney
According to Jason Schreier, Epic Games underestimated the number of developers needed to build the game, which was targeting a release in March 2027. The resulting delays reportedly pushed management towards generative AI. Jake Jones, Epic Games' communications director, made no secret of it when speaking to Bloomberg. "We are embracing AI-accelerated development methods, with the understanding that our teams remain the visionaries and retain control over the creative dimension of everything we produce," he explained in a statement sent to our colleagues.
In practice, developers have reportedly been asked to stop writing code by hand and to turn to tools such as Claude. The teams in charge of art direction aren't spared this "AI first" vision either, since all assets are now to be generated through AI-based workflows. Internally, the reorganisation is apparently going down badly. "Some developers have joked about how they'd deal with the AI's mistakes, namely by asking it to fix its own errors," one source confided.
Nothing for developers to worry about, really?
After the Bloomberg article went live, Tim Sweeney fired off a tweet confirming the company's change of direction while trying to reassure staff. "The goal isn't to do the same thing with fewer people, but to let everyone produce more, produce better, and pass all those benefits on to the teams using Unreal," said the Epic Games boss.
His comments echo those of Stephanie Arnette (senior external development manager on Fortnite) who, at gamescom LATAM (the South American edition of the German show), suggested that AI wasn't there to steal employees' jobs, but rather to help them work more efficiently.
Fortnite in trouble
Speaking of Fortnite, it's worth remembering that, last March, Epic Games announced more than 1,000 redundancies because of falling engagement with its golden goose. In a message to employees, Tim Sweeney noted that spending was outstripping revenue, and that trimming headcount was therefore necessary to ease the financial pressure. That wave of departures came on top of a $500 million cost-cutting plan covering, among other things, marketing and outsourcing.
Finally, still on the subject of big money, let's not forget that, in 2024, Disney wrote a $1.5 billion cheque to take a stake in Epic Games and secure the development of several titles over a number of years.
