Epic Games Delays Its Disney Shooter and Orders an AI First Production With No More Hand-Written Code

By CriticalPixel · 2026-10-12

Epic Games has pushed back its upcoming Disney collaboration and handed its developers a new mandate: use more AI to finish it. According to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, the game was slated for March and now has no new date, with the team told that the project will become an "AI first" production. That is a heavy way to start the week for the people building a game stuffed with some of the most protected intellectual property on the planet. The report is an exclusive built on unnamed sources, and I could not find an on-record statement from Epic or Disney on their official channels when I looked. Still, the details that surfaced in the first hours are specific enough to take seriously.

What Bloomberg reported

The core of the story is short. Epic delayed the release of an upcoming video-game collaboration with Disney and told its developers to use more artificial intelligence tools to finish the game, according to people familiar with the project who were not authorized to speak publicly. The title had been slated for March, and no new date has been communicated to the team. The article's subhead says the team was told the shooter will now be an "AI first" production. Bloomberg's paywall cut me off after the opening paragraphs, so everything past that comes from people summarizing the full piece, and I am flagging that instead of pretending I read it.

The sharper details come from an internal message. As quoted in a post by Wario64, one of the game's directors told staff "No more hand-written code" in a message reviewed by Bloomberg, and added that all art for the game would be "generated with full AI workflows." A summary from LootTrackerFN says Epic is steering developers toward tools like Anthropic's Claude, with human developers guiding the process, and that Epic frames it as "AI-accelerated development." The same thread says the project was originally planned for March 2027 and is moving slower than expected because Epic underestimated the staff and development time required. Treat those last points as secondhand until the full Bloomberg text or an Epic statement confirms them. Posts around the report also describe the project as a Marvel and Star Wars shooter, which fits Disney's lineup but is not something the opening paragraphs of the article say outright.

Why a $1.5 billion bet makes this stand out

Context matters here. On February 7, 2024, Disney announced it would invest $1.5 billion to acquire an equity stake in Epic Games alongside a multiyear project to build an all-new games and entertainment universe connected to Fortnite and powered by Unreal Engine. The release promised a persistent, open and interoperable ecosystem with characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar and more. In that release, Disney's Robert A. Iger called it Disney's biggest entry ever into the world of games, and Tim Sweeney talked about building something entirely new for the Disney and Fortnite communities. I cannot tell you from the reporting that this shooter is that persistent universe, because Bloomberg's opening describes it as a video-game collaboration and nothing more. What I can say is that Epic and Disney have spent more than two and a half years presenting this partnership as a pillar of both companies' game plans, and a delay with a ban on hand-written code attached is not the update anyone was waiting for.

Official Fortnite Halloween key art with Five Nights at Freddy's animatronics and Fortnite characters among graves and haunted houses

Meanwhile the Fortnite side of the house keeps shipping crossovers on a steady drumbeat, and the official Fortnite news page currently carries Halloween key art with Five Nights at Freddy's animatronics. That contrast is the awkward part of this story. The live-service machine that funds everything keeps running on its usual cadence, while the Disney project that was supposed to be the next big leap gets pushed with a mid-production change of method.

How people are reacting

Reaction under Wario64's post, the sample I could read, was small and split. One reply argued that people being upset about "No more hand-written code" shows a disconnect between the public and the reality of coding nowadays. Another joked about the QA nightmare of fixing a bug in code that nobody wrote, and a third riffed on the slop label. That is three replies, not a consensus, so take it as a mood rather than a verdict. What stands out is that even the defense is about the code, while the art line, with all assets "generated with full AI workflows" on beloved Disney characters, is where I expect the loudest pushback from players and artists once an official statement exists.

The CriticalPixel take

Here is my read. A delay is a schedule problem, and the reported fix is a process change that lands in the middle of production, historically the most expensive moment to change anything. Telling a team to stop writing code by hand and let AI generate the art does not erase the work of reviewing, integrating and debugging what comes out. It moves that work to the people supervising, who now own code they did not author. If the summary of Bloomberg's report holds and Epic underestimated the staffing needed, the plan reads less like a creative vision and more like a bet that tooling can cover a headcount gap. Disney's characters are among the most brand-managed assets in entertainment, and I would love to see how Disney's own approval process feels about art built through full AI workflows. Epic can call it AI-accelerated development if it likes, but a studio that slips the date and mandates the tooling in the same breath is asking its developers to carry the risk.

Until Epic or Disney says something on the record, treat the AI first plan, the director's message and the staffing shortfall as reported, not confirmed. The delay itself is the part with Bloomberg's own byline behind it, and it is the part players will feel: no date, no promise of a new trailer and a collaboration that was supposed to prove the $1.5 billion bet. The question for everyone waiting on this game is simple. Does a project built under a no hand-written code rule ship better, or just later?