Epic Games pivots to artificial intelligence first development for Disney shooter

Epic Games is shifting to an artificial intelligence first development model for an unannounced shooter game in collaboration with the Walt Disney Company, according to reporting by Ars Technica AI, Bloomberg, TechPowerUp, and Quartz. The change in strategy is accompanied by a delay to the Marvel and Star Wars project, Bloomberg, TechPowerUp, and Quartz reported. Internal employee messages viewed by Bloomberg indicate that human developers will manage code and assets produced by artificial intelligence models. [1][2][3][5][6]

Under the new development mandate, there will be no more hand-written code and all art assets will be generated through full artificial intelligence workflows, Ars Technica AI reported. Bloomberg reported that Epic Games has instructed developers to use models such as Claude from Anthropic. Human staff will be tasked with guiding and overseeing the assets generated by these systems, according to Ars Technica AI. [1][2][3][5]

The video game and software developer was founded by Tim Sweeney in 1991 as Potomac Computer Systems and is based in Cary, North Carolina. Epic Games creates Unreal Engine, a commercial game engine that powers external productions alongside the internal titles of the company. [7][8]

The company previously established a major partnership with the Walt Disney Company, which invested 1.5 billion dollars in Epic Games, Ars Technica AI reported. The news comes as studios across the games industry continue to evaluate artificial intelligence workflows to automate software creation. [1][8]