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Last night, during its State of Unreal presentation, Epic unveiled a number of upcoming Fortnite collaborations with Control Resonant, Sonic Crossworlds Racing, Phantom Blade Zero, and the award-winning Vampire Survivors. However, a mere matter of hours later, Vampire Survivors developer Poncle said it was "reviewing" its Fortnite collaboration due to Epic's use of generative AI.

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Poncle made the declaration in response to a reddit post discussing Vampire Survivors' Fortnite collaboration. "Following today's news about gen AI usage by Epic to create all sorts of game assets, including Fortnite characters," it wrote, "we're currently 'reviewing' our collaboration with Fortnite. We'll let you know if anything moves forward."

Poncle didn't specify which "news" it was referring to, but during last night's State of Unreal presentation, Epic debuted an experimental plugin feature which is able to integrate gen AI tools such as Claude with Unreal Engine. "What we've shown here today would take months to build by hand, but in the MCP server and Unreal, our artists were able to make this in days," Michael Lentine, senior director of Epic Games' research and development department, said at the time. "When you lower the technical friction, you can iterate more and make better games."

Poncle could also be reacting to a video from Epic detailing how it utilises tools such as Nano Banana - described as "an advanced AI image editing model that quickly gained attention for its exceptional prompt understanding, consistent character editing and scene preservation" - alongside Blender and Photoshop to create "digital art and content".

Generative AI remains hugely controversial, of course, raising substantial ethical and environmental concerns. It's replicative rather than creative, for instance, and can be trained on art without an artist's permission. Whether that violates copyright law is still being decided, but there are other concerns, such as the impact of AI on jobs, including those in the games industry. Many voice actors including Jennifer Hale, David Hayter and Ashly Burch have shared their concerns about the exploitative use of technology. Poncle did not specify exactly why it's launching a 'review' following Epic's news, or the steps it might take as a result, but Eurogamer has asked the developer for more information.

In November of last year, Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney said it no longer makes sense for developers to disclose AI use any more, and we may as well ask what kind of shampoo they use. "AI will be involved in nearly all future production," he said. Epic is no stranger to generative AI use, of course. In 2025, the company infamously recreated James Earl Jones' voice for Darth Vader using the technology, albeit with the permission of the now-deceased actor's family.

Generative AI is becoming increasingly commonplace in development. During this month's Summer Game Fest, it transpired games such as the Crazy Taxi revival and Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis are making use of generative AI. At this time, a Crystal Dynamics representative told Eurogamer the Legacy of Atlantis studios leveraged AI tools to "help our teams iterate on ideas faster and more efficiently, while ensuring that all finished content in the final product is human-crafted".

It remains to be seen if the other announced Fortnite collaborations might be similarly reviewed by their developers in light of the renewed AI discourse surrounding Epic. In April, Phantom Blade Zero studio S-Game released a statement shunning the controversial technology, assuring its community that "every single piece of content in our game has been crafted by the hands of real artists". It added it will "not use AI visual tech that could alter our artists' original creative intent" for Phantom Blade Zero. But, what of its Fortnite deal?

Eurogamer has asked Sega, Remedy and S-Game for comment on the studios' upcoming collaborations with Epic, and will update when we hear more.

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