Vampire Survivors studio Poncle seems to be reconsidering its plans for a profitable Fortnite crossover, after Epic Video games this week confirmed it now makes use of generative AI instruments throughout the battle royale’s artwork and design course of.
A current behind-the-scenes video printed by Epic Video games confirmed how the corporate now makes use of generative AI prompts to regulate hand-drawn designs for Fortnite character skins and artwork belongings used within the recreation’s idea part. The video confirmed AI getting used to show sketches into extra detailed designs, or experiment with different variations of paintings (turning a daylight scene into night-time, for instance). The video additionally confirmed AI introducing errors or undesirable additions which additionally wanted to be corrected by hand — one thing Fortnite gamers beforehand advised could have resulted in odd-looking belongings making their approach into the dwell recreation.
Epic Video games continued its give attention to generative AI utilization in yesterday’s State of Unreal livestream, the place it confirmed a glimpse at upcoming Unreal Engine 6 capabilities. The corporate demoed how its up to date engine will broadly incorporate generative AI instruments to iterate and construct upon 3D environments.
“For UE6, we see LLMs, generative AI fashions, and instruments like Claude and Codex enjoying a central function in serving to you construct content material sooner whereas sustaining the artistic management you want,” wrote Unreal Engine growth lead Marcus Wassmer in an accompanying weblog submit.
All of this seems to have impacted Poncle’s enthusiasm for showing in Fortnite, as a part of Epic Video games’ plan to function quite a few in-game crossovers with titles accessible by way of the Epic Sport Retailer.
“Following in the present day’s information about gen AI utilization by Epic to create all kinds of recreation belongings, together with Fortnite characters, we’re at the moment ‘reviewing’ our collaboration with Fortnite,” Poncle wrote in a message posted to reddit (thanks, iFireMonkey). “We’ll let you already know if something strikes ahead.”
Poncle’s message has obtained reward from Vampire Survivors followers, who’ve mentioned that the indie roguelike shooter ought to now distance itself from Epic. However Fortnite has, in fact, publicly featured AI technology for a while — corresponding to its chatty recreation of Darth Vader that might reply to gamers with the voice of James Earl Jones.
Epic Video games’ public dialogue of its AI utilization has drawn an unsurprisingly blended response throughout the web, with many criticizing the corporate’s embracing of generative AI instruments notably after devastating employees cuts that noticed round 1,000 employees members laid off. Others, nonetheless, has advised Epic is solely acknowledging the truth of fixing recreation growth, amid rising AI utilization throughout the business.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s Information Editor. You possibly can attain Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or discover him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
