Epic Games is using AI tools to develop code and features for Unreal Engine, according to Marcus Wassmer, the company’s executive vice president of development. In comments reported by This Week in Video Games, Wassmer said most current development is happening across Fortnite, Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) and UE6.
Wassmer said tools such as Claude and Codex have helped Epic eliminate “non-deterministic cooking bugs” that the company had been trying to fix for a decade. He also said AI-assisted monitoring helps identify PC stability issues in Fortnite by flagging driver and hardware combinations that cause problems.
The tools are being used not only to write code, but also to help keep the engine stable as Epic streamlines and modernizes its codebase, Wassmer said. He added that a possible Unreal Engine 5.9 update would be relatively modest and focused on specific systems, but would include changes developed with AI. Epic is concentrating its efforts on UEFN and UE6.
Wassmer also said Epic’s use of AI extends beyond its recent “vibe coding” work on the Epic Games Launcher. Engineers remain responsible for controlling the scope of AI’s use, even though they are not writing most of the code in that process.
Addressing concerns about AI in game development, Wassmer said Epic is more worried about moving too slowly than about skepticism toward AI. He argued that AI-assisted software development could help the company respond more quickly to customer feedback, and said the quality of its games and tools would be the best way to address doubts.
Sources: Game Developer.