Epic Games shifts its Disney shooter to AI-first development
Developers were told to stop writing code by hand and rely on tools like Claude.
1,000+Epic employees laid off earlier this year
The short version
- Bloomberg reports that Epic Games is moving to an AI-first development model for its Marvel and Star Wars shooter with Disney.
- Developers were told there would be no more hand-written code and that all art would be generated with full AI workflows.
- The game was slated for March 2027 and is now delayed indefinitely amid the AI shakeup and slower-than-expected development.
- Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said the aim is to build more and better stuff, not to do the same stuff with fewer people.
Why it matters
The project shows a major studio betting that AI models can write most of the code and art for a large commercial game. For developers, it signals AI workflows moving into full production, where people manage model output instead of writing code. A survey cited by Ars Technica found that most AI use in game studios is still for research and brainstorming, not code.
“No more hand-written code”
What people are saying
Commenters on Hacker News were skeptical. Several predicted the game would flop and questioned whether generated code and art can work for games. Others noted that many tech companies already use AI for coding and that Epic's layoffs were tied mainly to Fortnite's decline.