Epic Games has delayed its upcoming Star Wars and Marvel shooter and told developers to build the game with an "AI-first" production model, Bloomberg reports. The release moves off its March target to an undated slot. The report cites an internal email from the game's director.

The instruction is unusually specific. According to Bloomberg, the director told staff that the game's art should be "generated with full AI workflows" and that developers should write "no more hand-written code". The directive covers both code and art production. Bloomberg reviewed the email directly. Epic has not confirmed the project-specific claims.

What did Tim Sweeney say?

CEO Tim Sweeney addressed the shift shortly after the report published. He posted on X, not about the Disney game specifically, but about Epic's broader approach. Sweeney did not confirm or deny the Bloomberg claims about the Disney project.

His statement read: "We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic, moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration. 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."

Two things stand out in that post. First, staff are being reassigned across the company, which signals an operational reorganization rather than a single-team experiment. Second, Sweeney framed the payoff as flowing to all Unreal Engine users, not just Epic's internal studios. That framing positions the pivot as engine-level strategy.

What does this change for developers?

For the team on the Disney shooter, the mandate changes daily workflow. Code and art creation now run through generative AI tools as the default path. Hand-written code becomes the exception, not the rule. The March release window is gone, replaced by an unspecified later date.

The directive lands in an industry still split on generative AI. Some developers and players remain openly hostile to the technology, and adoption at this scale by a major publisher-backed project is rare. Epic is among the highest-profile companies to formalize an AI-first mandate on a marquee licensed title.

The delay itself is a concrete cost. A missed March window on a Disney-licensed Star Wars and Marvel property carries licensing and marketing implications, though no revised date or financial figures have been disclosed.

Why the Unreal Engine angle matters

Sweeney's mention of "all teams using Unreal" points beyond one game. If Epic retools internal development around AI acceleration, those workflows can become engine features, documentation or tooling shipped to licensees. Third-party Unreal developers may eventually inherit parts of this pipeline whether they asked for it or not.

That is the mechanism worth watching. Internal mandates at engine owners tend to migrate outward into the toolchain. The pace of that migration, and whether it arrives as optional tooling or default behavior, will shape how the wider Unreal ecosystem absorbs generative AI.

What happens next?

No new release date has been announced for the Disney shooter. Sweeney's post frames the reorganization as a company-wide effort in progress. The next signal to watch is whether Epic extends the AI-first model to other internal projects, or rolls related workflows into a public Unreal Engine release.