Epic Games goes "AI first" on Disney project, Bloomberg reports

Epic Games has told developers on its $1.5 billion Disney collaboration to stop writing code by hand, according to a Bloomberg report published October 12, 2026. The Unreal Engine maker is pivoting the project to an "AI first" development model, in which AI models produce all the code and guide all the artwork for an upcoming shooter, and human developers shift into a supervisory role.

The report cites unnamed people familiar with the project, along with internal Epic employee messages that Bloomberg says it viewed. Those messages name Anthropic's Claude as one of the models doing the generating. The stakes are considerable: this is one of the biggest bets in the games industry on generative AI replacing, rather than assisting, core creative work.

What exactly is changing at Epic?

The directive is blunt. According to the Bloomberg report, the new approach means "no more hand-written code" and art assets "generated with full AI workflows." Developers on the project will manage and guide code and art assets produced by models such as Claude, rather than authoring that material themselves.

That's a different posture from how most studios currently use AI. The common pattern so far has been assistance — a model drafts, a human rewrites or heavily edits. Epic's reported stance flips the ratio: the machine produces, the human curates.

For a company that also builds Unreal Engine, the toolchain most of the industry runs on, Epic's internal practices tend to signal where it thinks production is heading. If Epic treats full-AI workflows as viable on a flagship project, expect that posture to surface in the tooling it ships to everyone else.

The takeaway: Epic is reportedly moving from AI as a helper to AI as the primary producer, with humans in a quality-control role.

What is the Disney project, and what happens to it now?

The collaboration dates to early 2024, when Disney announced a $1.5 billion investment in Epic to build a new gaming universe tied to its biggest franchises. The flagship product was a shooter themed around Marvel and Star Wars properties, and it carried a March 2027 release target.

That date is now off the table. According to Bloomberg's sources, the project has been delayed indefinitely, and not solely because of the AI pivot. The report also points to understaffing and development that has run slower than expected.

So two forces are colliding on one project: a schedule already slipping, and a radical change in how the remaining work gets done. Indefinite delays on a $1.5 billion partnership are themselves notable; layering an unproven production model on top makes the outcome genuinely unpredictable.

The takeaway: a Marvel and Star Wars shooter once slated for March 2027 now has no release date at all.

Why does this matter beyond Epic?

The games industry has spent the past two years arguing about generative AI in small increments — concept art aids, code autocomplete, NPC dialogue experiments. Epic's reported move is the clearest signal yet that a major studio is willing to test full AI-authored production on a marquee title, not a side experiment.

The choice of model also matters. Internal messages viewed by Bloomberg reference Anthropic's Claude, a model better known for coding and enterprise work than for game art pipelines. That Epic would route both code and artwork decisions through models of this type suggests the company sees general-purpose models, not bespoke game-specific systems, as the production backbone.

There's also a labor dimension. "No more hand-written code" is a phrase that will land hard with game developers, a workforce already squeezed by industry layoffs. If the Epic experiment produces a shippable game at acceptable quality, it will become the reference case every publisher cites. If it stalls, it becomes the cautionary tale.

The takeaway: this is the industry's highest-profile test of whether AI can replace, not just accelerate, core game development.

What comes next?

Neither Epic nor Disney has publicly confirmed the Bloomberg report, and the sourcing is anonymous. But the specifics — internal messages, a named model, an indefinite delay — suggest a change already in motion rather than a proposal under debate.

The project's fate now rests on a question the whole industry is watching: whether human-supervised, AI-authored production can actually ship a AAA-quality shooter. The answer, whenever the Disney collaboration resurfaces with a date or a cancellation, will shape how publishers budget and staff games for years.