“No more hand-written code.”
Bloomberg obtained an internal message in which a director working on Epic Games’ unannounced Star Wars and Marvel crossover shooter used those exact words. According to the report, the message went on to say that the project’s art would be “generated with full AI workflows.” For the artists and engineers on that team, it’s hard to imagine two more memorable sentences.
Meanwhile, the game itself has been delayed.
The March target is gone
Per Bloomberg, the untitled Disney crossover had been lined up for release in March. That window has now been abandoned in favor of a new internal release plan, which Epic has not made public. There’s no replacement date, no list of platforms and no official name. Exactly when and where the game will arrive remains a mystery.
The cause of the slip is more mundane than the AI storyline. The report says Epic misjudged how much time and how many resources the Star Wars and Marvel shooter would require, and development has moved more slowly than planned.
What makes it notable is the timing. The delay coincides with Epic reportedly urging its developers to adopt an “AI first” production model. Those working on the game have reportedly been nudged toward tools such as Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, while humans are expected to supervise the output.
Many Epic developers were left “stunned” by the push, Bloomberg said. Considering what the memo said, that’s not surprising.
How Epic is framing it
Epic’s response puts the emphasis squarely on its staff. “We’re embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers who are the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do,” communications director Jake Jones told Bloomberg in a statement.
The wording is deliberate. It casts developers as the ones steering the vision, while leaving open the question of who, or what, actually does the building.
Tim Sweeney’s preemptive posts on X
Mere moments before Bloomberg’s story went live, Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney took to X/Twitter to say the company has a “huge pivot underway,” explaining that Epic is “moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration.”
He then addressed the concern everyone was already thinking. “The aim isn’t to do the same stuff with fewer people,” Sweeney wrote, “but to enable everyone here to build MORE and BETTER stuff, and to bring the benefits to all teams using Unreal.”
A later post struck a more restrained tone: “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.”
In yet another post, he made the case for why this matters to players. “The biggest change will be much faster time from having an idea to playtesting it,” Sweeney said. “This will be great for gameplay, as most of the recent AAA failures can be attributed to game systems going through far too much of their development process without being able to playtest.”
Set that alongside the delay and the picture gets uncomfortable: a project whose developers were instructed to go AI-first is precisely the one that’s fallen behind schedule.
What’s known about the shooter
Officially, very little. Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that Epic was developing an extraction shooter starring Disney characters, which at the time was described as resembling Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders.
Epic’s ties to Disney are substantial. In 2024, Disney took a $1.5 billion stake in the Fortnite maker, locking in the partnership. Aside from additional crossovers within Epic’s still-popular, battle royale-focused game, the full scope of that relationship has yet to be revealed. Disney has also recently pushed back on claims that it wanted to acquire the studio outright.
For the moment, then, the most revealing glimpse of Epic’s largest Disney project is a director’s memo headed by four words: “No more hand-written code.”