At Unreal Fest Tokyo—the annual Epic Games event targeted at developers using the Unreal Engine technology—the company took to the stage to share updates about Unreal Engine 6, the somewhat controversial upgrade to its engine that puts a far greater emphasis on AI workflows. While developers have questioned Epic’s plans to remove the engine’s long-running workflows in place of AI assistants, the company doubled down on this, with CEO Tim Sweeney attending the event himself to defend the choice.
Detailing the differences between the current engine and the sixth version due for launch in 2027, Epic insisted on its plans to remove Blueprints from the engine. Blueprints are a workflow that many developers use to script how characters and events work within a game, and have existed in the engine for multiple decades. Epic promises “AI-assisted migration” as it moves away from this and other long-term systems.
Though Sweeney appeared on stage ostensibly to apologize for the decision, he insisted it’s a good thing. “While it will be painful at first, subsequent productivity will greatly improve,” the CEO told developers, based on a report of the event from Famitsu. Indeed, according to Sweeney, the use of AI in the engine could improve productivity up to four times that of development done without AI workflows.
“I believe we’re entering a very interesting era,” Sweeney said in comments made prior to his keynote speech, as reported by Denfaminico Gamer. “Major shifts are already taking place, especially in game development, and the state of the game economy is also shifting at a fast pace. The driving force to this is the acceleration of almost everything caused by AI tools. A significant gap in competitive ability will grow between those that adopt AI tools and those that don’t, and the adoption rate of tools is rising in places like China and South Korea. This trend is unlikely to be reversed.” He continued,
Considering this, we intend to maximize the acceleration of workflows using AI in Unreal Engine and use it to help make games even greater. The very nature of competitiveness in the gaming industry is set to undergo a fundamental shift, and I believe it is crucial that a wider variety of innovations emerge from and develop within Japan.
Recent years have seen more Japanese developers move away from internal engines to using Unreal, including Square Enix and Atlus. At the same time, some developers are cautious about the move, and differing opinions on the use of AI tools is a debate unlikely to subside any time soon. Epic Games is clearly set on AI being the future.
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