Epic Games shocked developers by entering "AI first" mode for a delayed shooter featuring Marvel and Star Wars characters.
Even works of art will be produced by artificial intelligence
Epic Games is rushing to develop AI-based games for Disney's upcoming shooter that uses Marvel and Star Wars characters. The project's developers have reportedly been told to implement artificial intelligence into their workflow, including to produce game art.
According to a new Bloomberg report, the game's developers were told to run an "AI-first" production model using Anthropic's cloud AI models. The team no longer uses "handwritten code," and even artists are pressured to use the technology, which has become a punching bag among real players. The unannounced game director reportedly told the developers that all art should be "produced with a full AI workflow."
"We welcome the accelerated development of AI led by Epic's developers, who are the visionaries and creative drivers behind everything," Jake Jones, director of communications for Epic Games, said in a statement.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has made no secret of his love for generative AI, even criticizing storefronts like Steam that force developers to disclose their use of the technology on their store pages. But employees within the ranks of Epic Games are less impressed. According to Bloomberg, many people working on the Disney game responded with confusion and shock to last week's surprising AI policy. It's not clear what the company's guardrails are to fix the mistakes the AI makes and not allow the "slope" to seep into the final product.
The upcoming shooter, which Bloomberg reports was supposed to release in March 2027, has now been delayed due to slow progress and understaffed teams. Despite Disney investing $1.5 billion in 2024 for partnerships that include the project, the Fortnite maker laid off 1,000 people earlier this year amid battle royale struggles and the costs of an ongoing antitrust lawsuit.
Thanks to big improvements in the latest AI models like Claude Opus 5.5, the modding and homebrew scenes have been hit with an influx of new coded projects in recent weeks. This has affected everything from jailbreaking PS5s to people being able to play popular classics in their browser.
However, no major gaming company has yet attempted to use this technology on a large scale as the foundation of their development pipeline. Anyone who has suggested anything even close to that has quickly exposed themselves to backlash from gamers online.
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