Epic's gen AI use deters partners, Vampire Survivors x Fortnite might get cancelled

Epic Games kicked off controversy among game developers when it revealed gen AI tools for Fortnite concept creation, and now some partners might actually be pulling out of future collaborations because of it.

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Before the big State of Unreal event kicked off, Epic Games shared a brief video that showed how its artists are using generative AI tools to help design concept assets for Fortnite. Epic further revealed that Unreal Engine 6 would have native support for AI tools like Claude Code and Gemini, only worsening Epic's position to specific groups.

The reveal caused a stir in the game dev community--gen AI is usually vilified for helping lay off thousands of video game workers--to the point where Epic might lose out on a collaboration with one of the most popular indie game developers of our era: Poncle, the team behind Vampire Survivors. Epic had just announced a Vampire Survivors crossover in Fortnite, but now that Poncle has learned about gen AI being used, it looks like Vampire Survivors x Fortnite may not happen after all.

"Following today's news about gen AI usage by Epic to create all sorts of game assets, including Fortnite characters, we're currently "reviewing" our collaboration with Fortnite. We'll let you know if anything moves forward," Poncle's official account said on Reddit.

The news has not been taken lightly by gamers or developers, and the term "AI slop" is prevalent when discussing Unreal Engine 6 on Twitter.

Poncle has garnered tremendous acclaim for their highly-addictive bullet-hell indie, but there's also a kind of rebellious and youthful spirit around the developer that often comes out against corporate greed (their DLCs are always quite affordable) and controversial things, such as Epic's AI use.