Epic Goes "AI First" on Its Marvel and Star Wars Shooter, and Then Delays It

Epic Games has delayed its unannounced Marvel and Star Wars shooter, and the reason this one is getting attention isn't the delay. It's how the game is reportedly being built. I've got opinions, so let's get into it.

What's been reported

The story comes from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier. The game is a shooter crossing Marvel and Star Wars characters, and it's one of three projects in a non-Fortnite deal between Epic and Disney. Earlier reports described it as an extraction shooter in the vein of Arc Raiders. It had been aiming for a March release and has now been pushed back, with no new date announced.

According to the report, the team was told to move to an "AI first" production model. A memo reportedly said there would be no more hand-written code, that art would be generated through full AI workflows, and that staff should use Anthropic's Claude under human guidance. Epic's comms chief, Jake Jones, calls it "AI-accelerated development" and says it's led by Epic's own developers as the creative drivers. Tim Sweeney has framed the wider push as a way to build more and better stuff. Several developers told Bloomberg they're sceptical.

Why this one feels different

Studios using AI isn't news any more. Plenty use it for prototyping, placeholder text, tidying up admin and the dull jobs that eat a team's week. We said as much in our own piece on where we stand on AI, and I've got no problem with it there.

What's different here is the scale of it, and the characters involved. Marvel and Star Wars are two of the most recognisable worlds in existence, drawn, designed and sculpted by generations of artists. Hearing that the art on a game set in them could be generated end to end is a lot to take in. For a lot of players, the craft is the whole point of buying in.

The delay tells its own story

It's worth being careful here. Nobody outside Epic can say whether the AI approach caused the delay, and the report doesn't claim it did. Games slip all the time. But the timing is hard to ignore, with a project going through a big change in how it's made and its release date moving at the same time. If the promise is that AI makes things faster, a pause is a bit of an awkward look.

The other thing to remember is that this is a first-hand account of an internal memo, not a finished game. Judging it before there's anything to play wouldn't be fair, and Epic's own description of human developers steering the work deserves a hearing.

Where we land

My view hasn't changed. AI can be useful at the start of a project, and the final product, everything you see, hear and read, should be made by people. A game can be technically polished and still feel hollow if nobody with a point of view shaped it. Collectors in particular have sharp eyes, and if the art starts to look waxy, they'll notice quickly.

The bigger question is trust. Studios that are upfront about how they work, and keep real artists at the centre, earn goodwill that lasts. Studios that aren't will find players are quicker to spot it than they expect. We'll be watching to see what Epic and Disney say when the game is properly revealed.

Kirk