Epic Games delays Disney shooter in pivot to AI-first development strategy

Epic Games has delayed an unannounced shooter video game produced in collaboration with the Walt Disney Company while pivoting toward an AI-first development strategy, according to reports from Bloomberg, Ars Technica, GamesIndustry.biz, Eurogamer, Polygon, Kotaku, TechPowerUp, and Quartz. The project features characters from the Marvel and Star Wars franchises and was previously scheduled for launch in March, GamesIndustry.biz reported. Bloomberg first reported the delay, citing sources familiar with the unannounced title, but no new release date has been confirmed. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][9][10]

Internal messages viewed by Bloomberg indicate that human developers will now oversee and manage code and art assets produced by generative models such as Anthropic's Claude, Ars Technica reported. The new workflow mandates that developers produce no more hand-written code and rely entirely on generative tools to build art assets, according to Ars Technica. Eurogamer reported that Epic Games informed internal development teams to adopt generative tools to accelerate production after the project encountered development obstacles. [1][3]

Epic Games was founded by Tim Sweeney in 1991 as Potomac Computer Systems and is headquartered in Cary, North Carolina. The studio maintains an 88/12 revenue share split for creators on its digital storefront, the Epic Games Store, and operates Unreal Engine, which provides rendering and physics simulation tools for third-party interactive media. [11][12]

The operational shift represents a significant structural change in how major game engines and publisher studios approach core software engineering and asset creation. Neither Epic Games nor Disney has published an updated release timeline for the delayed project. [1][2]