Epic tells its Star Wars and Marvel shooter team: 'no more hand-written code'

Some time last week, on a video call, one of the directors of Epic Games' unannounced Disney shooter told the team how the game would now get finished. According to people familiar with the project who spoke to Bloomberg, and an internal message Bloomberg reviewed, there would be "no more hand-written code", and the game's art would be "generated with full AI workflows", with tools such as Anthropic's Claude doing the generating and humans managing and guiding what comes out.

Bloomberg's Jason Schreier broke the story on Monday 12 October at 11:24am Pacific. The game, a shooter built around Marvel and Star Wars characters, had been slated for March and now has no new release date communicated to staff. Epic has never announced it, and Disney did not respond to Bloomberg's request for comment.

What the report actually says

Everything load-bearing here traces back to one outlet. Ars Technica, Engadget, PC Gamer, Quartz and a half-dozen others rewrote the Bloomberg exclusive, which sits behind a paywall, and the open part of Bloomberg's page is softer than the quotes now going around. Its headline says Epic "Asks Developers to Use More AI", its standfirst says the team was told the game "will now be an 'AI first' production", and its first paragraph says Epic told developers "to use more artificial intelligence tools to finish the game".

The strongest line, that the art will be "generated with full AI workflows", comes from a single director's message relayed by unnamed sources. Nobody outside the team has established whether that means final in-game assets or concept and production art, which image or 3D models are involved, or whether Disney's character approvals have signed off on any of it. Claude, the one tool named, is a text and code model, and Bloomberg introduces it with "such as", so the art tools remain unnamed.

The delay also predates the AI order. Engadget reports the game was earlier rumored for November before it slipped to March, and the rewrites citing Bloomberg say the project fell behind because Epic misjudged headcount and timeline. Staff reportedly asked how AI mistakes would be caught, and some joked about asking Claude to fix its own errors, according to Quartz and GamingBolt.

Sweeney got there first

At 18:00 UTC on Monday, Epic chief executive Tim Sweeney posted on X: "We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic, moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration. The aim isn't to do the same stuff with fewer people, but to enable everyone here to build MORE and BETTER stuff, and to bring the benefits to all teams using Unreal." Bloomberg's page went live 24 minutes later, at 18:24 UTC. Several outlets wrote that he posted shortly after the report; the timestamps say he got ahead of it, and since Epic had been asked for comment, that reads as a company managing the news rather than reacting to it. His post never mentions Disney or the game.

By Tuesday morning it had 2.37 million impressions, with 3,566 replies and 1,768 quotes against 11,258 likes, a ratio that reads as argument rather than applause. The line passed around as "our humble goal is to survive the AI revolution" is PC Gamer's paraphrase. What Sweeney actually wrote, answering a user who asked "Gonna accelerate an IPO?", was this: "Our more modest aim is to survive the AI revolution, help other developers do the same, and come out on the other end making better code and content faster." When another user said Epic could not read the room, he replied: "Much of the room wants it to be 2016 again, but it's not."

Epic's statement, attributed by Engadget and Quartz to communications director Jake Jones, put the weight on people: "We're embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers who are the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do." The denial about fewer people lands roughly six months after Epic laid off more than 1,000 staff on 24 March, citing a downturn in Fortnite engagement.

Disney's characters, Disney's rules

This is where the story matters beyond games. Disney took a $1.5 billion equity stake in Epic in February 2024, alongside a Fortnite-connected universe the two companies announced together. So the first reported case of Star Wars and Marvel characters going through an all-AI art pipeline is happening inside a company Disney part-owns, under a license Disney granted. At the same time Disney is suing Midjourney in federal court in California over images of those same characters made by the public, a case with docket entries as recent as 7 October.

Disney's chief executive Josh D'Amaro set the house line in a 5 August staff memo reported by Business Insider, describing AI as a way of "enhancing a creative process that will always be human-centered, artist-driven, and creator-led." A director telling a team that the art will come out of "full AI workflows" is the first public test of that sentence on a flagship license. Disney has said nothing so far, and its biggest AI licensing deal, the OpenAI agreement covering more than 200 characters for Sora, fell apart in March when OpenAI moved to shut Sora down.

Epic does have form on doing this with consent attached. In July, Fortnite gave 36 characters AI voices and personas built from performances by professional actors who agreed to voice models, a year after an AI Darth Vader approved by James Earl Jones' estate swore at players and needed a hotfix.

What this means if you make work

In practice, for anyone making work this week, the lesson is about who gets to generate what. AI pipelines on the biggest film and game properties are arriving licensed, in-house and credited to the licensee, while the same characters made outside that license end up in a lawsuit. The open lane for independent AI filmmakers and game makers is original IP and the tooling itself, not fan work on Disney characters.

The part worth watching for anyone building in Unreal Engine is Sweeney's line that the benefits will reach all teams using Unreal, though nothing has shipped off the back of this report. His own efficiency figures, gains running from "20% in some areas" to "5x for other areas", are his claims and nobody has checked them. Industry mood is not on his side either: in the GDC 2026 State of the Industry survey of more than 2,300 professionals, 36% said they use generative AI at work, mostly for research and brainstorming rather than making assets, and 52% said it is bad for the industry, up from 30% a year earlier.

What remains unresolved is the part that matters most to artists: whether "full AI workflows" means the art players will actually see, which models make it, and whether Disney signed off. The next concrete markers are a release date from Epic and any statement from Disney or Lucasfilm, and neither has been scheduled.

Timeline

• Date: Wed 7 Feb 2024. Event: Disney and Epic announce a Fortnite-connected universe and a $1.5B Disney equity stake; Source: Epic and Disney newsrooms
• Date: May 2025. Event: AI-voiced Darth Vader in Fortnite swears at players, hotfixed; Source: Ars Technica, The Verge
• Date: Wed 11 Jun 2025. Event: Disney and Universal sue Midjourney (2:25-cv-05275); Source: PacerMonitor, CourtListener
• Date: Dec 2025. Event: Disney and OpenAI announce a Sora licensing deal covering 200+ characters; Source: Ars Technica, Variety
• Date: Tue 24 Mar 2026. Event: Epic lays off 1,000+ staff, citing a Fortnite engagement downturn; Source: BBC, TechCrunch
• Date: Wed 25 Mar 2026. Event: Disney-OpenAI deal off after OpenAI moves to shut Sora; Source: Ars Technica, Variety
• Date: Thu 16 Jul 2026. Event: Fortnite adds 36 AI-voiced character personas built from consenting actors; Source: fortnite.com, The Verge
• Date: Wed 5 Aug 2026. Event: D'Amaro memo: AI "human-centered, artist-driven, and creator-led"; Source: Business Insider
• Date: Week of 5 Oct 2026. Event: Director tells the shooter team on a video call: "no more hand-written code", art via "full AI workflows"; Source: Bloomberg
• Date: Mon 12 Oct 2026, 18:00 UTC. Event: Sweeney posts "We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic"; Source: X
• Date: Mon 12 Oct 2026, 18:24 UTC. Event: Bloomberg exclusive published; Source: Bloomberg
• Date: TBC. Event: New release date; any Disney statement; Source: Not announced

Sources note: Bloomberg's exclusive (Jason Schreier, 12 October) is the only primary report; we read its headline, standfirst, first paragraph and publish time, and the body is paywalled. Details from the video call come via outlets citing Bloomberg. Sweeney's posts and their metrics were pulled from X on Tuesday morning. Nobody was contacted for this draft.

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