Epic Games is retooling for "maximum AI acceleration" seven months after laying off 1,000 workers

Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney claims the company's manoeuvring around generative AI isn't about achieving "the same stuff with fewer people," but enabling all employees to "build more and better stuff and bring the benefits to all teams using Unreal."

In March, Epic laid off over 1,000 employees as part of an effort to reduce costs by around $500 million. When announcing those cuts, Sweeney reiterated that Fornite remains "one of the most successful games in the world."

Sweeney was accused of failing to "read the room" or attempting to "accelerate an IPO" after sharing his thoughts on X. In response, he suggested it would be misguided to believe it's possible to replicate the production environment of yesteryear.

"Much of the room wants it to be 2016 again, but it's not. Our job, as the provider of tools and technology to much of the industry, is to design for the present that is and the future that will soon be. Personally I'm optimisic about it and see it as empowering for creators."

He also claimed generative AI tools result in better gameplay systems and shorter production cycles.

"The biggest change will be much faster time from having an idea to playtesting it. This will be great for gameplay, as most of the recent AAA failures can be attributed to game systems going through far too much of their development process without being able to playtest," he wrote.

"[...] Our more modest aim is to survive the AI revolution, help other developers do the same, and come out on the other end making better code and content faster."

Sweeney shared his latest musings on the same day Bloomberg reported the company is asking developers to use more generative AI, much to their chagrin.

Sources told the paper that Epic has delayed the release of an upcoming Star Wars shooter made in collaboration with Walt Disney and is now requiring developers to leverage AI tools such as Anthropic’s Claude in order to finish the project.

Staff on the project have reportedly been told to deploy an "AI first" production model that will result in "no more hand-written code" and art "generated with full AI workflows."

That direction reportedly left some Epic developers in shock. Bloomberg claims some made jokes about how to handle errors produced by LLMs—asking whether Claude should be told to fix its own mistakes?—while others questioned whether it was a serious request.

A survey published by GDC earlier this year indicated that around one-third of video game professionals are currently using generative AI tools, but that over half believe the tech will have a negative impact on the industry.