Epic Games has confirmed its active use of artificial intelligence tools in the development of its core products, including Unreal Engine 6 and Fortnite. Marcus Wassmer, Epic's executive vice president of development, stated that the company is more concerned with the risks of moving too slowly than with AI skepticism. This approach, which Epic refers to as 'vibe-coding,' involves engineers guiding AI tools to achieve desired architectural outcomes rather than writing the bulk of the code themselves.
Wassmer elaborated that the company is iterating with AI to deliver desired features while maintaining performance and scalability envelopes. This follows earlier statements from Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, who expressed a pragmatic view on AI adoption. In June, an Unreal Engine blog post indicated broad usage of AI for code generation and analysis across Epic's engineering teams.
Epic has identified several benefits from using AI tools like Claude Code and Codex. These include the resolution of long-standing non-deterministic cooking bugs and accelerated shader compression, which reduces patch sizes. Additionally, a significant rewrite of the D3D12 rendering layer, estimated to take weeks for a single engineer, was completed in about a week using AI, resulting in improved CPU performance and fewer bugs.
Sweeney has also voiced criticism regarding Steam's AI disclosure policies, likening them to mandatory political essays. However, Epic's candid approach to its own AI integration allows developers and players to form their own opinions on its use. Wassmer emphasized that Epic believes in being upfront about their AI development practices, sharing best practices with other developers, and using the best available tools to create Unreal Engine 6.
This strategic adoption of AI is seen by Epic as the future of game and software development, with Wassmer asserting that the quality of the delivered games and tools will ultimately address any skepticism surrounding AI's role.