Epic Games has reportedly delayed an unannounced Disney shooter and instructed its development team to rebuild its production model around AI tools, including AI-assisted programming and AI-generated artwork.

According to a new Bloomberg report, the project features characters from the Marvel and Star Wars franchises and was previously expected to launch in March 2027. No new date has been communicated to the team, according to the report.

People familiar with development said progress had been slower than Epic anticipated, partly because the company underestimated how much time and staffing the project would require. Developers were subsequently instructed to adopt an “AI-first” production model involving tools such as Anthropic’s Claude. One of the game's directors told the team, "No more hand-written code," wanting instead for developers to edit and guide AI agents.

Epic Communications Director Jake Jones told Bloomberg that Epic’s developers would remain the creative forces driving the project while using AI to accelerate production. 

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney publicly confirmed that a broader change is underway at the company shortly after the report appeared. “We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic, moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration,” Sweeney wrote. He argued that the objective is not to produce the same amount of work with fewer employees, but to help Epic’s existing teams create more and eventually extend those capabilities to developers using Unreal Engine.

The reported development problems arrive during a difficult period for Epic. In March, the company laid off more than 1,000 employees, equivalent to roughly 20% of its workforce, after Sweeney acknowledged that declining Fortnite engagement had left Epic spending substantially more than it earned.

Epic also identified more than $500 million in additional savings involving contractors, marketing, and unfilled positions. The company explicitly said those layoffs were not caused by AI, while presenting the restructuring as necessary to fund its transition toward Unreal Engine 6 and the next generation of the Fortnite ecosystem.

Sweeney’s insistence that the current AI initiative is about expanding output rather than reducing headcount is important. Even so, the proximity of the two developments will inevitably intensify concerns about whether generative tools are being introduced to support development teams or compensate for resources removed through restructuring.

Epic had already signaled this direction through its technology roadmap. Unreal Engine 5.8 introduced experimental MCP-based integrations that allow large language models to interact more directly with editor workflows. During State of Unreal, the company also positioned AI-assisted development as an important component of Unreal Engine 6, alongside Verse, interoperable assets, and deeper connections between Unreal projects and Fortnite.

As we noted when examining reactions to that roadmap, these tools could reduce repetitive production work and accelerate experimentation. They also introduce questions involving maintainability, authorship, training data, consistency, and the ability of developers to understand and control generated systems.

AI usage itself is no longer unusual inside game studios. A recent CESA survey found that 85.8% of participating Japanese developers use generative AI at least occasionally. Another study commissioned by Google Cloud reported that 87% of surveyed developers use AI agents, particularly for testing, localization, programming assistance, and processing large amounts of production data.

Sony has taken a similarly cautious public position. The company says AI can “unleash the creativity” of PlayStation Studios, but its disclosed examples concentrate on QA, engineering support, animation processing, and repetitive technical work while keeping human creators and performers central.

Epic’s reported instructions sound considerably more sweeping. There is a meaningful difference between using AI to accelerate prototyping or automate a specific production task and declaring that a commercial game’s code and artwork should move entirely through AI-centered workflows.

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