Epic Games tells Disney shooter developers to build with AI first

Epic Games wants artificial intelligence doing the heavy lifting on its upcoming Disney shooter. According to Bloomberg, the company has told developers that future content for the game should be created primarily with AI, with humans supervising the results.

What Epic is asking developers to do

The directive moves the Disney collaboration shooter to what has been described as an “AI-first” production model. AI tools generate the material. People review, refine and approve it.

The game itself is an extraction-style shooter featuring Disney characters. In that genre, players typically drop into a match, grab loot or complete objectives, and try to get out alive before losing everything.

The release schedule has been a moving target. The project had at one point been slated for a March release and, at another, targeted for a November 2026 launch.

It is now delayed indefinitely. Epic has not announced a new launch date.

The delay followed internal reviews that reportedly raised concerns about the originality of the game’s gameplay and mechanics.

The $1.5 billion backdrop

This game is not a side project. It is a key product of Disney’s $1.5 billion equity investment in Epic Games, announced in 2024.

The partnership is meant to pull in franchises from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and others. The extraction shooter is one of the most visible early bets in that plan.

Epic is no stranger to AI tools. The company has used them for Fortnite concept art, prototyping dialogue for non-player characters, and coding support.

Until now, the stated aim of that work has been efficiency, not replacing staff. Making AI the default creator on a flagship title is a much bigger step than using it to sketch rough concepts or draft placeholder lines.

The move also lands as Epic searches for its next act after Fortnite. The research frames the ongoing strategy changes on the Disney project as a sign of the challenges the company faces in that post-Fortnite era.

What this means for Epic, Disney and the industry

Using AI to fix an originality problem is an interesting gamble, since AI systems are generally built on existing material.

For developers, the directive raises familiar worries about job displacement. An approach where AI creates and humans supervise changes the shape of creative jobs, even if headcount does not change.

Disney and its franchises carry strict expectations around how characters look, sound and behave. Human review is the safeguard here.

Investors and industry watchers will have a few things to track. The first is a new release date, which has not yet been set. The second is whether the gameplay concerns raised in internal reviews get addressed. The third is how Epic describes the role of AI once the game is shown publicly, since fans have been vocal in the past about AI-generated content in games.