Epic Delays Marvel and Star Wars Shooter for AI-First Shift

Epic Games has a new extraction shooter in the works. It reportedly stars Marvel and Star Wars characters. And it has reportedly been pushed back so the team can rebuild how it makes the game around generative AI.

That is not a sentence anyone would have expected to write a few years ago. But here we are.

A March target, now gone

According to insider reports, the untitled project was originally aiming for a March release. That window has now been dropped in favour of an unspecified date. The reason, per an internal message from one of the game's directors, is a switch to what the studio calls an "AI first" production model.

The instructions are blunt. Developers were reportedly told there would be "no more hand-written code," and that art would be produced through "full AI workflows." This is not about letting AI help out in a corner of the pipeline. This is the pipeline.

What we know about the game itself is thin. It is an extraction shooter, a genre that has been busy finding new angles lately, and it uses characters from two of Disney's biggest properties. Beyond that, there is no title, no platforms and no release date. Disney reportedly has not responded to requests for comment on either the game or the AI mandates.

Epic doubles down

If you have followed Epic's direction recently, the pivot itself won't shock you. The company is not hiding from it, either. Communications director Jake Jones told Bloomberg that the studio is "embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers who are the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do."

CEO Tim Sweeney went further on Twitter. "We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic, moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration," he wrote. He also tried to head off the obvious worry about jobs: "The aim isn't to do the same stuff with fewer people, but to enable everyone here to build MORE and BETTER stuff, and to bring the benefits to all teams using Unreal."

That last part matters. Epic is not only a game developer. It makes the engine that a huge chunk of the industry builds on, so whatever it does internally tends to ripple outward.

The backlash, and Sweeney's response

Predictably, the news did not go down well with everyone. Much of the criticism landed directly in Sweeney's replies. He pushed back on at least a couple of critics, arguing that Epic is trying to "survive the AI revolution" and build for where game development is now and where it is heading.

One reply told him to read the room. His answer was pointed: "Much of the room wants it to be 2016 again, but it's not."

He wasn't the only one making the case that this shift is unavoidable. Aahkash Gupta, a former Fortnite producer, argued that AI is already baked into tools developers use every day. "In June, Epic wired Claude and Gemini straight into Unreal Engine 5.8, with more coming in Unreal Engine 6. So for millions of game developers, AI shows up as a built-in feature of software they already pay for," he wrote.

Gupta also suggested the public argument doesn't match what happens in studios. "And honestly, the industry's AI fight is mostly for show. Google Cloud found 9 in 10 game developers already use AI agents at work. The debate happens on stage while the usage happens at the desk."

Why It Matters

For multiplayer players, this story is less about one delayed shooter and more about what it signals. An extraction shooter built around Marvel and Star Wars would be a big-ticket release by any measure. Seeing a project of that size reorganised around AI-generated code and art suggests Epic sees this as a core strategy, not an experiment on the side.

It also fits a wider pattern. Generative AI has been a running fight across the industry, as our recent gen AI roundup showed, with studios and players often far apart on where the line should sit. Sweeney's "2016" jab makes it clear that Epic isn't interested in meeting critics halfway.

There's also a licensing question hanging over all of this. Disney has stayed quiet, and it is worth watching whether the owner of Marvel and Star Wars has anything to say about AI-generated art carrying its characters. Marvel fans already have a live-service option in Marvel Rivals, so this game will need to justify itself on quality, not just brand power.

The real test is the game itself. Epic says AI will let its people build "MORE and BETTER" things. If this shooter eventually ships and plays well, that argument gets stronger. If the delay drags on or the result feels hollow, critics will have their proof. Either way, Unreal developers should keep a close eye on what Epic learns here, because those tools are likely to end up in their hands too.