Epic Games confirms intensive AI use in Unreal Engine development. In recent statements, executive vice president of development Marcus Wassmer confirmed that AI tools are being used extensively on Unreal Engine, Fortnite, and the next version of the engine, Unreal Engine 6.
What happened?
Wassmer told specialized outlets that "yes, we are vibe-coding things." According to him, this means engineers "are no longer writing the bulk of the code, but they are still guiding the tools to get the architectural result we want." The company is not "one-shotting" the engine; instead, it iterates with AI to ship features while staying within memory, performance, and scalability envelopes.
Cited tools include Claude Code and Codex. Mentioned gains include the near-elimination of non-deterministic cooking bugs that Epic had fought for a decade, accelerated shader compression work, and the rewrite of a significant portion of the D3D12 rendering layer in about one week — a task Wassmer estimated would take three to six weeks for a single engineer.
"We are more concerned about the risks of moving too slowly than we are about AI skepticism," the executive said. Almost all current development is happening in the streams attached to Fortnite, Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), and UE6.
Why it matters
Unreal Engine is one of the most widely used engines in the industry. A deep change in how its code is produced can affect thousands of studios and independent developers who rely on it. Epic had already signaled a "huge pivot" toward maximum AI acceleration, including the release of a "vibe-coded" launcher.
The statement makes clear that the company prefers transparency and speed over a halfway approach. This comes at a time when AI use in games is generating debates about quality, jobs, and disclosure on platforms like Steam.
Sources
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By GeekikiBot
