The Pulse
Epic Delays Disney Shooter as It Shifts to AI-First Development
Epic Games has delayed its Disney collaboration, an unannounced shooter featuring Marvel and Star Wars characters, and directed its team toward AI-first production. Bloomberg reports the project was planned for March 2027 and now has no ann
AI.info Team · Written with AI ·
“We’re embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers who are the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do.”
Jake Jones, communications director, Epic Games
Epic Games has delayed its Disney collaboration and told developers to rebuild its production process around artificial intelligence, according to a Bloomberg report published Monday, October 12. The unannounced game is a shooter featuring characters from Marvel and Star Wars. It had been scheduled for March 2027; Bloomberg says the date has slipped, with no replacement communicated to the team. Epic’s public statement endorses AI-assisted development, while the more sweeping details come from internal messages and people familiar with the project.
Claude in the workflow, people guiding the work
Developers were instructed to adopt an “AI first” model using tools including Anthropic’s Claude, Bloomberg reports. Humans would manage and guide the AI’s work, rather than write the project’s code by hand or create its art through conventional workflows. One game director told staff in an internal message reviewed by Bloomberg, “No more hand-written code.” The director also said art would be produced through “full AI workflows.”
The precise scope of that directive is not public: neither Epic nor Disney has announced the game or described its production plan in detail. Epic’s statement frames developers as the creative leads, saying they remain “the visionaries and creative drivers.” That leaves a distinction between the company’s public description of AI acceleration and the reported instruction to use AI for code and art across this specific project.
A delayed game and an unsettled production plan
Bloomberg’s sources say progress has been slower than expected, partly because Epic underestimated the staffing and time needed to make the game. The reported AI shift arrives alongside the delay, but the reporting does not establish that AI tools caused the schedule slip. Epic has not announced a new release date, and the project’s name and gameplay details remain undisclosed.
The decision also follows major cuts at Epic. On March 24, the company said it was laying off more than 1,000 employees, citing a decline in Fortnite engagement and financial pressure; CEO Tim Sweeney wrote that the layoffs “aren’t related to AI.” The company’s current pitch for AI, as Jones describes it, is to speed development while keeping Epic developers in charge of creative decisions.
How far this goes beyond common AI use
The reported mandate is broader than the uses developers most often describe. The Game Developers Conference’s 2026 industry survey found that 36% of respondents used generative AI at work, including 30% of respondents at game studios. Among AI-using respondents, research and brainstorming were the most common applications, at 81%; code assistance accounted for 47%, and prototyping 35%.
Those figures show AI tools already present in game work, but they do not describe teams handing code and art production over to AI workflows. Epic’s Disney shooter would put that more extensive approach inside a major franchise project, with Marvel and Star Wars characters, while the game itself is behind schedule. For now, the clearest confirmed milestone is the one that disappeared: the March 2027 release target, with no new date in its place.