Epic reportedly delays Marvel and Star Wars shooter, tells team to build it with AI

Epic Games has delayed its unannounced shooter featuring Marvel and Star Wars characters and told the team to move to an AI-first production process, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the project. Eurogamer, Polygon and GamesIndustry.biz have all covered the report.

According to Polygon and Eurogamer, the game was planned for March 2027. It does not have a new release date. Bloomberg’s sources said the project fell behind because Epic underestimated how many developers it would need and how long it would take.

Developers have reportedly been told to finish the game with AI tools, including Anthropic’s Claude, while staff review what the tools produce. In an internal message seen by Bloomberg, one of the game’s directors told the team, “No more hand-written code,” and said all of the game’s art would be made with full AI workflows. GamesIndustry.biz reports that staff heard about the change on a video call last week, and that Bloomberg’s sources described some of them as stunned. Bloomberg also said no other major games company has tried to make a game mostly with AI before.

Epic hasn’t confirmed the delay. In a statement to Bloomberg, Epic communications director Jake Jones said the company is adopting AI-accelerated development, with Epic’s own developers leading the creative work. Disney did not immediately respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment, according to GamesIndustry.biz.

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney posted on X that the company has a “huge pivot underway here at Epic, moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration.” He wrote that the aim is to let staff build more and better things rather than do the same work with fewer people, and to pass the benefits on to teams using Unreal Engine.

Disney invested $1.5 billion in Epic in 2024 and took an equity stake. The two companies agreed to work together on several games, and GamesIndustry.biz says this shooter was meant to be the first. In March, Epic announced it was cutting about 1,000 jobs. Polygon reports that Sweeney blamed a drop in Fortnite engagement for the cuts.