Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Fortnite and Unreal Engine devleoper Epic Games, has repeatedly supported the use of AI in video game development. His stance has been controversial, considering that many gamers and developers are anti-AI. Nevertheless, he continues to defend it, arguing that AI coding has become significantly better in the past year and will usher in a "golden age of gaming." Despite a survey showing some gamers are getting more comfortable with AI in games, it's still largely frowned upon in the wider gaming community.
The reaction to a recent report that Epic Games' upcoming Disney title is prioritizing AI use in development reinforced that. In anticipation of that report, Sweeney posted on X that Epic Games is currently "moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration." The objective is to maximize efficiency in order to create more and better software. He argues that the time he spent coding to create Unreal Engine 1 could've been saved by using AI.
He believes artificial intelligence would've been able to do just as good a job. Now, Sweeney also claims that AI will let developers spend fewer resources creating large-scale games, leading to a "golden age of gaming." A quick look at the replies shows that plenty of people don't agree with him. There is currently a lot of controversy surrounding Epic Games' AI usage, and these recent statements haven't helped.
Rumors indicate that developers have even begun to refuse to work with Epic for Fortnite collabs due to the company's use of artificial intelligence. AI has been implemented in Fortnite in order to make its NPCs have fully-fledged conversations with players. More recently, there were reports of developers being told that there is "no more hand-written code," as they are to use AI tools instead.
Epic Games' new launcher, now available for preview, was vibe coded. This means that instead of writing the code manually, the code was based on prompts that the programmers gave to AI. In an attempt to compete with Steam, Epic released a launcher that left fans feeling its creation lacked effort.
It's clear that Sweeney is not backing down from his pro-AI stance, so Epic Games' upcoming products will truly serve as a litmus test for how comfortable players are with generative AI in the games that they play.
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