Epic delayed its Disney shooter and told that team to stop hand-writing code

Epic Games has delayed an unannounced shooter it is making with Disney, and a director on that project told the team there would be “no more hand-written code,” according to Bloomberg. The original report is Bloomberg’s 12 October article. This account uses the outlets that relayed it. Bloomberg’s own page did not return the article text from here.

What the relays agree on

Quartz, Colleen Cabili, says Bloomberg reported an unannounced shooter featuring Marvel and Star Wars characters, developed with Walt Disney. People familiar with the project were not authorized to speak publicly. Development had lagged, Quartz writes, because Epic misjudged the headcount and the timeline. The game now has no new release date.

Quartz says an internal message Bloomberg reviewed, from one of the project’s directors, told staff there would be “no more hand-written code” and that the game’s artwork would be “generated with full AI workflows.” Developers were told to use Anthropic’s Claude, “with humans managing and guiding the AI’s output.” Ars Technica, Kyle Orland, uses the same two quoted phrases and says human developers would manage and guide code and art from models such as Claude. Polygon attributes both phrases to the director’s message as Bloomberg reported it.

The date splits. Ars says the report had the shooter slated for March 2027. Kotaku says Bloomberg reports a March 2027 release. Quartz and The A.V. Club say March and do not give a year. Investing.com’s summary on Yahoo Finance also says March, without a year.

Jake Jones, Epic’s communications director, gave Bloomberg a statement that Quartz, Polygon and Kotaku quote in the same words: “We’re embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers who are the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do.” Ars prints that sentence and calls the speaker an Epic spokesperson.

Quartz, attributing Bloomberg, says the news was shared on a video call last week. It came as a shock to a number of developers on the team, and staff questioned how errors in AI-generated work would be handled.

Quartz also says Bloomberg described this as the first attempt by a major video-game company to build a title using AI as the primary foundation of its development pipeline. That is Bloomberg’s characterization, as Quartz relays it.

What Tim Sweeney posted

Sweeney’s public posts do not name the Disney game, the internal message, or Claude. They are his framing of a company-wide change, not a confirmation of the director’s note.

At 18:00:40 UTC on 12 October he wrote: “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.”

At 18:23:24 UTC he replied: “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.”

Ars says that post came shortly after Bloomberg’s story. Polygon says it came shortly before. Bloomberg’s publish time is not in the relays opened here.

On a large Unreal production, the relays’ version of an AI-first pipeline is concrete. Code on that project is no longer written by hand, art goes through what the director’s message calls full AI workflows, and people manage and guide the output. The review question is the one in the staff reaction Quartz attributes to Bloomberg: who checks generated code and art, and who owns an error the model produced. Sweeney says the aim is more and better work, including for teams using Unreal. He does not describe a review process.

The 2024 stake, the cuts, and the survey

Quartz says Disney invested $1.5 billion in Epic in 2024 for an equity stake, and that the partnership was set to begin with this shooting title. Quartz says a Disney spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment, according to Bloomberg. The A.V. Club likewise says Disney did not offer a comment in Bloomberg’s report. Nothing here is a statement of Disney’s position.

The layoff wording differs. Quartz says Epic cut 1,000 jobs earlier this year, citing in part slower Fortnite sales, in the same Bloomberg account. Investing.com’s Yahoo summary says the company cut approximately 1,000 jobs in March, citing softer sales growth.

Quartz says a survey cited by Bloomberg found that more than one-third of game developers use AI in their work, and that more than half believe the technology is harmful to the industry. Quartz does not name the survey. Ars cites figures from a survey ahead of this year’s Game Developers Conference and does not tie them to Bloomberg, so those figures stay out.