Epic Games is said to be collaborating with Disney on a shooter videogame based on Star Wars and Marvel – and that it will be primarily developed with AI. Just as Darth Vader ended up more machine than human, a forthcoming videogame bearing the Star Wars banner could be more chatbot that flesh-and-blood software developer. ... Star Wars and Marvel shooter videogame being developed ‘Primarily with AI’ – report
Epic Games is said to be collaborating with Disney on a shooter videogame based on Star Wars and Marvel – and that it will be primarily developed with AI.
Just as Darth Vader ended up more machine than human, a forthcoming videogame bearing the Star Wars banner could be more chatbot that flesh-and-blood software developer.
According to a report at Bloomberg, Fortnite developer Epic Games is currently collaborating with Disney on a shooter based on the Marvel and Star Wars franchises. Originally, the untitled game was intended for launch in March 2027; it’s now thought to have been delayed to an unspecified date.
As development continues, the artists and programmers have allegedly been told to use AI tools in their workflows. Programmers are expected to use chatbots like Claude (“No more hand-written code,” is one edict said to have been handed down), while artists are being ordered to employ “full AI workflows” to produce assets.
Stories about Epic Games’ increasing use of AI have emerged before. In June, Aftermath reported on a video that showed how Epic used AI to (theoretically) speed up the process of turning early concept art into in-game models.
This increased “AI first” process comes directly from Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney, who on the 12th October wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that his company is making a “huge pivot” towards the technology.
“The aim isn’t to do the same stuff with fewer people,” he wrote (according to The Economic Times), “but to enable everyone here to build MORE and BETTER stuff, and to bring the benefits to all teams using [the game engine] Unreal.”
The irony here being that, months earlier, Epic announced its plans to lay off over 1,000 staff members. This, coupled with new orders to use AI to make “better code and content faster” (Sweeney’s words again) sounds suspiciously like the company wants more output from fewer workers.
It’s unknown exactly what Epic is working on for Disney, though it’s likely the result of the $1.5bn deal the two companies made in 2024. At the time, the two companies announced a new “multi-year project” – an online space filled with Star Wars, Pixar and Marvel-themed zones where players can “play, watch, shop and engage with content.”
To date, neither Epic nor Disney have announced a name or release date for that project.
Epic certainly isn’t the first developer to adopt AI in its workflow, though as Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier points out, it’s the first time a game has been developed with AI at the forefront – at least that we know of. It remains to be seen how the game-playing public will react to the results, however; there are ongoing questions about AI’s ethical and copyright implications and its impact on the environment. And, purely on an aesthetic front, imagery that is based on other people’s art often ends up looking bland and derivative.
As always, executives may be pushing for the adoption of AI, but we don’t yet know whether their customers will accept the results.
