Epic Games is moving Unreal Engine 6 toward early access in 2027 while applying an AI-first mandate across its own production, including the delayed Disney shooter. The company is also building a Linux anti-cheat for Fortnite and selling ArtStation and Sketchfab to KitBash.
Epic Games spent 2026 shifting its public position and its internal process toward AI. Unreal Engine 6 was announced on May 24 at the Rocket League Paris Major, with Verse and multi-threading work aimed at CPU bottlenecks, and the company later put AI at the center of the engine, planning early access for 2027. Sweeney said on October 18 that AI will let studios build games previously blocked by cost, citing the 70 percent of his time on the original Unreal Engine that went to typing and refactoring code. The production standard inside Epic is blunter. Bloomberg reported that developers on the unannounced Disney collaboration shooter, featuring Marvel and Star Wars characters and previously set for March 2027, were told to adopt an AI-first setup, with a director's instruction of "No more hand-written code" and a directive that in-game art be generated through a complete AI workflow.
The engine work ran alongside that. Unreal Engine 5.8 shipped in June with Live Link Hub official, Mesh Terrain, MetaHuman Collection, and MegaLight, and 5.8's MCP support lets a local LLM agent operate Unreal Editor. The City Sample update added two levels built entirely on Procedural Content Generation, replacing Houdini-based generation, and Epic released the Lore version control system under the MIT license, with a pre-stable API. Epic also sold ArtStation and Sketchfab to KitBash in August, saying it would focus on Unreal Engine 6, Fortnite, the developer ecosystem, and the Epic Games Store.
Fortnite remains the pilot surface. Epic is developing EAC Linux v2 and plans to test it first with Fortnite, with requirements including a signed kernel, TPM 2.0, Secure Boot, and Kernel Lockdown Integrity Mode, and Linux support arriving when enough distribution maintainers meet them. The Fortnitemares event added Black Clover skins for Asta, Yuno, and Noelle. Not every partner accepted the AI direction: poncle said on June 17 it was reviewing its announced Fortnite collaboration after seeing generative AI used to create game assets.
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A 29-year-old Fortnite player, Edward Fris, was arrested after Epic Games passed his in-game voice chat to the FBI. Playing as WagesOfNinja, he said he wanted to kill someone and would shoot investigators who came to his house. An FBI affidavit treats the recordings as threats under a federal statute. Fris was charged two days after the affidavit was prepared and has pleaded not guilty.
Epic Games will run the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam from November 12 to 15, a four-day game development event built on Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite. Teams can have up to five people, and the number of AI agents a team uses has no cap; participants aged 18 or older with a valid Epic Games account can enter solo or as a team. The theme is announced at a kickoff stream at 4:00 AM Japan time on November 12, and submissions close at 10:59 AM on November 16 via itch.io. Regular cash prizes total $65,000. First place in the Unreal Engine and UEFN main categories is $7,500 each, second is $5,000, third is $2,500, and there is a Best Student Project category. Separate development continuation grants of $50,000, $25,000, and $10,000 are set for each of the two main categories. An in-person event runs November 14 and 15 at Digital Jungle SF in San Francisco.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said on October 18 that AI will let studios build games previously blocked by cost and resources, calling it "a new golden age of gaming." He cited his own work writing the original Unreal Engine, where he says 70 percent of his time went to typing and refactoring code. Epic has made AI central to Unreal Engine 6, planned for early access in 2027, and is reassigning developers to capture AI gains.
Epic Games is developing EAC Linux v2, a Linux version of its Easy Anti-Cheat software, and plans to pilot it first with Fortnite. The requirements include a signed kernel, TPM 2.0, Secure Boot, Measured Boot, BPF LSM, Kernel Lockdown Integrity Mode and Kexec disabled. Fortnite's Linux support arrives when enough distribution maintainers meet the requirements, a number Epic has not disclosed, and no launch timing is announced.
Epic Games has told developers on its unannounced Disney collaboration shooter to adopt an AI-first production setup, according to a Bloomberg report by Jason Schreier citing people familiar with the project. The game, which features Marvel and Star Wars characters, was scheduled for March 2027 and has been delayed with no new date announced. Internal messages reviewed by Bloomberg included a director's instruction of "No more hand-written code" and a directive that all in-game art be generated through a complete AI workflow using tools such as Anthropic's Claude, with humans managing and directing the output. The policy was conveyed in a video conference, and some developers were left stunned. Epic Games communications director Jake Jones told Bloomberg the company is embracing AI-accelerated development, with Epic's developers leading the way and setting the vision.
Epic Games is giving away two PC titles on the Epic Games Store until October 16, 2026 at 0:00. Out of Sight is a horror adventure that mixes first-person and second-person perspectives, following Sophie, a girl who has just regained her sight, as she escapes a danger-filled mansion. TerraScape is a city-building puzzle game set on floating islands, with no resource management or combat, built around placing buildings for points.
Epic Games announced on Saturday that Black Clover characters Asta, Yuno, and Noelle are available as cosmetic skins in Fortnite Battle Royale for the annual Fortnitemares event. The items include grimoire back bling, sword and wand pickaxes, an Anti-Magic weapon wrap, and a Nissan GT-R Nismo car body with two Anti-Magic tires. Epic teased the collaboration in its Fortnitemares trailer on September 29. The new Black Clover season premiered the same Saturday, with Studio Pierrot returning.
DeNA will hold its game developer study session Game Developers Meeting Vol.66 on Friday, September 25, 2026, with Kenjiro Kuwano of Epic Games Japan as speaker. The theme covers Unreal Engine mobile development: balancing graphics and performance, asset download and delivery for releases and live operations, and an overview of Lore, the version control system Epic Games is developing. The event is free and in person only, with a networking party after the sessions.
Epic Games Japan announced the keynote speakers and first sessions for Unreal Fest Tokyo 2026, set for November 3 and 4 at the TFT Building West Hall in Ariake, Tokyo. CEO Tim Sweeney and Epic Games Japan representative Takayuki Kawasaki will share the keynote, covering the Epic ecosystem, the company's vision, and the rollout of UE6. More than 30 sessions are planned. Participation is free.
At Game Makers Scramble 2026, Epic Games Japan software engineer Kazuhisa Minato gave a talk on UE5.8's MCP support, which lets a local LLM agent operate Unreal Editor live. He covered setup and extension methods and described building a game in two days. Unreal MCP is free and ships as a plugin for the MCP server in Unreal Editor, with toolset plugins providing domain-specific MCP tools and built-in skills.
Epic Games updated the Unreal Engine 5 sample project City Sample to version 5.8 on August 28. The overhaul, the first large-scale renewal in four years, adds two new levels built entirely on the engine's Procedural Content Generation (PCG) feature, replacing the original Houdini-based city generation. The update also includes support for Unreal MCP and the CitySamplePCG_Demo plugin, which was shown during the State of Unreal 2026 keynote at Unreal Fest Chicago 2026.
Epic Games Japan announced on August 18 that it will hold Unreal Fest Tokyo 2026 on November 3 and 4 at the TFT Building West Wing (TFT Hall) in Ariake, Koto-ku, Tokyo. The event is the Japanese edition of Epic Games' official developer conference, where creators and developers from game development, video, film, automotive, architecture, manufacturing, and simulation gather to learn about Unreal Engine and Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) technologies and use cases, and to network. Participation in the main event is free, with a first-come, first-served capacity limit. The November 4 schedule includes the official networking party "Unreal Fest Closing Party," which requires a separate ticket priced at 7,700 yen including tax. Registration for participation opened the same day, August 18. Speaker and session details are scheduled to be announced sequentially from around September. The event will also feature an exhibition area, an indie game corner, and "Unreal Hub," a community space where attendees can interact directly with speakers. As in the previous year, applications are being accepted for satellite venues that will broadcast the event live for those who cannot attend in person.
Epic Games announced on August 11 that it is selling ArtStation and Sketchfab to KitBash, the company behind KitBash3D and Greyscalegorilla. Epic will focus on Unreal Engine 6, Fortnite, the developer ecosystem, and the Epic Games Store. Users keep access and IP rights.
Sandfall Interactive, the French studio behind the turn-based RPG "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33," stated at a postmortem event in Yokohama on July 26 that it will not expand its team despite the game's success. CEO Guillaume Broche said that creativity comes from the constraints of being small, and that knowing you cannot do everything creates the necessity to focus on what is important. The studio currently has about 26 people, and Broche wants to maintain that scale for the next project, aiming to tackle something "a bit crazy." The event, co-hosted by Epic Games Japan, also included a roundtable with developers from Atlus and Tango Gameworks. Broche described the team's achievement as "a reproducible model," not a miracle, thanks to the right people and tools like Unreal Engine and MetaHuman. The game, released in 2025 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, sold 1 million copies in three days and 5 million by October 2025, and won Game of the Year at multiple major awards, including The Game Awards 2025 and the BAFTA Game Awards 2026. Despite this, Broche said the ideal is a scale where everyone knows each other's faces and names.
Epic Games has filed a motion for a consent judgment and permanent injunction against former associate producer Hayden Cohen, who was sued for leaking Fortnite confidential information, including details about a South Park collaboration. The settlement permanently prohibits Cohen from accessing or disclosing Epic's trade secrets, pending court approval.
Epic Games held Unreal Fest 2026 in Chicago from June 16 to 18, where the next-generation Unreal Engine 6 was announced. Among the indie games on display, SoKrispyMedia's Chalk Warfare stood out: a battle royale third-person shooter where players draw firearms with magic chalk, which the game's CNN-based AI then materializes into usable weapons with adjustable stats.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney posted on July 1 that Steam's 30% base commission deters major free-to-play titles like Genshin Impact from launching there. He argued lower fees would attract those companies and increase Steam's revenue. Critics pointed to Epic's own layoffs and noted that many such games already exist on Steam.
In an exclusive interview at Unreal Fest 2026, Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney and engine lead Marcus Wassmer detailed Unreal Engine 6's open specification for interoperability, allowing assets like character cosmetics to move between engines such as Unity and Godot. They compared the vision to web browsers sharing standards and confirmed AI integration via the Model Context Protocol, with no lock-in to any specific language model.
Epic Games Japan announced the release of Unreal Engine 5.8, focusing on performance improvements and enhanced core functionality. The update strengthens world building, character and animation creation, virtual production, and real-time rendering. Live Link Hub becomes official, and new features include Mesh Terrain, MetaHuman Collection for crowds, and MegaLight for dynamic lighting.
Sjoerd De Jong, a 27-year veteran of Unreal Engine and 12-year Epic Games employee, announced his departure on June 19. Known as Hourences, he worked as a level designer, evangelist, and senior product director, and helped found the Epic Developer Community and restructure the Fab marketplace. He cited a turning point in the industry as a factor.
Epic Games has released Lore, an open-source version control system designed for game and entertainment production. It handles both source code and large binary files like images, audio, and 3D models. Lore is available under the MIT license and has been used internally as Unreal Revision Control in Unreal Editor for Fortnite. The current release is pre-stable, with APIs and protocols subject to change.
On June 17, Epic Games announced during its State of Unreal 2026 keynote that Fortnite would collaborate with several titles including Vampire Survivors, developed by poncle. Within hours, poncle posted on Reddit stating it was reviewing the partnership. The developer cited news that Epic Games is using generative AI to create game assets including Fortnite characters. A video published June 16 showed an internal tool called Gen Media being used in the art creation process, with prompt-typing visible. The State of Unreal presentation also emphasized generative AI features: Unreal Engine 5.8 added conversational AI support, and the planned Unreal Engine 6 will integrate AI agents like Claude and Codex for development tasks. Poncle has previously stated it would reject publishing games using generative AI or Web3 technology. The developer said it will inform if there are any developments, leaving the collaboration's fate uncertain.
Epic Games announced Unreal Engine 6 on May 24, 2026, during the Rocket League Paris Major. The engine features a new programming language called Verse and multi-threading optimizations aimed at eliminating CPU bottlenecks. Full details are expected at Unreal Fest Chicago 2026 in June. The first title confirmed to adopt the engine is Rocket League.