Epic has spent the last few days (or really months) pushing generative AI as the future of Fortnite development and game creation as a whole via its upcoming Unreal Engine 6. That has led to one studio, Vampire Survivors developer Poncle, publicly suggesting it might back out of an upcoming Fortnite crossover.
On June 17, the official Poncle account on Reddit replied to a post sharing the news about an upcoming, just-announced Vampire Survivors collaboration heading to Fortnite. The comment wasn’t a happy, PR-friendly celebration, though. Instead, Poncle seems to be unsure if the collab will even happen following Epic’s further push into AI and use of genAI in Fortnite.
Here’s Poncle’s full statement via Reddit:
Following today’s news about gen AI usage by Epic to create all sort of game assets, including Fortnite characters, we’re currently “reviewing” our collaboration with Fortnite. We’ll let you know if anything moves forward.
Kotaku has reached out to Epic and Poncle.
Earlier this week, Epic released a video showing how it uses generative AI to ideate, refine, and craft assets in Fortnite. The video directly showed artists and devs having to spend some time cleaning up and fixing the errors introduced by using AI tools, with the artists commenting on this as part of the process when such tools are implemented. That hasn’t stopped Epic Games from pushing AI tools further. On Wednesday, Epic announced that Unreal Engine 6 will be filled with AI tools and genAI features and seemingly revealed that it has been integrating AI-generated code into its games and software for some time now.
Poncle appears to be the first developer to publicly claim to be “reviewing” an upcoming deal with Fortnite as a result of all of this AI nonsense. Of course, it is possible that Poncle will still move forward with the collab. Still, I suspect some of the other indie devs involved with Fortnite, like the creator behind co-op horror hit Lethal Company, might also not be fans of Epic’s use of AI-generated assets in Fortnite and might also want to “review” their deals.
